The White House Takes Action on Renewable Energy Storage

President Obama announced this morning that he is putting forth actions that will accelerate grid integration of renewable energy and storage. This announcement comes hours before the White House hosts a Summit on Scaling Renewable Energy and Storage with Smart Markets. Regulators, power companies, developers and others will come together to promote better grid integration for renewables and discuss efforts for energy storage and other flexible resources.

The actions that the President is taking are expected to add at least 1.3 gigawatts of additional energy storage in the next five years. Specifically, they include $130 million of new investor funding commitments for energy storage, increasing the federal government’s storage capacity for aiding in demand response management, adding a new 7 megawatts PV solar system at a Navy base in California, and many others.

A large number of state level, power company and non-profit announcements also came along with the White House’s. These announcements include allowing consumers choices from an array of distributed energy resources, investments in storage technology research, community storage initiatives, and many expansions of solar energy use for customers of power companies.

A California-based electric company announced an investment of $3 billion every year through 2020 that will integrate distributed solar and energy storage into their business model.

This type of announcement is coming from a multitude of different companies and states, many of which are focused on solar and the opportunity the industry brings to economies, the environment and their customers.

The announcements are an encouraging sign and continued trend toward investment and innovation in renewable energy sources, such as solar. Grid integration and energy storage are beneficial and important to so many players, and it is encouraging to see these initiatives from the President.

 

(via fact sheet from the White House Office of the Press Secretary: https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/06/16/fact-sheet-obama-administration-announces-federal-and-private-sector).