ISO New England, the folks who run the six-stage power grid, had filed a proposal with FERC, the federal group that regulates electricity, for ways to integrate batteries and other fast-acting storage into its energy markets. Here’s their news release, and here is Greentech Media’s take.
This stuff really pegs the MEGO Meter (as in “my eyes glaze over”) – it’s boring and convoluted beyond belief. But it’s important, because without rules and regulations for consistent operation and monetary return, new technologies won’t get used to any degree.
A key point from the Greentech Media story:
Since the late 1970s, however, ISO New England has had a lot of pumped hydro, now accounting for nearly 2,000 megawatts of power and nearly 12,000 megawatt-hours of stored energy. These turbine-powered, water-moving batteries now participate in ISO-NE markets either as a generator when they’re discharging, or as a “Dispatchable Asset Related Demand” when they’re charging.
But the market structures built for pumped hydro, which can’t rapidly switch between charging and discharging, won’t work for batteries. The storage resources in the ISO New England interconnection queue are capable of moving continuously and rapidly between charging and discharging. They are also capable of providing regulation services while charging or discharging.To capture these features in the market design, ISO-NE has created a set of rules meant to “provide a means for batteries (and other storage technologies capable of continuously and rapidly transitioning between charging and discharging) to participate simultaneously in the energy, reserves, and regulation markets.”
As I said, pretty dull. But pretty important.
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