Key steps for companies considering on-site energy storage.
Brian Carey is a principal with PwC based in San Jose, and leads PwC’s U.S. Cleantech Advisory practice. He has more than 20 years of experience on issues involving energy industry strategy, including market entry, innovation, supply chains, customer operations, and sustainability. Catherine Potter is a Director in PwC’s Sustainable Business Solutions group, based in Washington, D.C., with experience in business strategy, risk and opportunity analysis, stakeholder engagement, and organizational change.
From the passage in California of Assembly Bill 2514, which required the state Public Utilities Commission to set procurement targets for energy storage for the state's three major investor-owned electric utilities, to the recent landmark action by a major utility to purchase more than 250 MW of energy storage resources through an RFP solicitation (marking the largest-ever purchase of grid-connected energy storage in U.S. history), the energy storage market is gaining momentum. Among the various drivers of this new market are 1) a growing penetration of renewable energy in the resource mix, 2) an increasing focus on climate change and resource scarcity, 3) the growing prevalence of demand charges for commercial and industrial energy users, and 4) various other regulatory changes. In addition to utility-scale storage projects, companies with sophisticated or intensive energy needs are increasingly considering energy storage for siting at their own facilities, as part of a broader trend toward a mixture of centralized and decentralized power.