California regulators address battery storage safety as capacity climbs

As California adds massive amounts of battery storage, safety concerns have risen with fires erupting at storage facilities. However the project pipeline shows no sign of slowing down.

The California Energy Commission and California Public Utilities Commission hosted a workshop Feb. 23 to discuss safety concerns for large-scale lithium-ion BESS systems designed to serve the electric grid that are currently in development, permitting or construction stages or have begun operations.

"We know there's a history of safety incidents, as well as a focus in California on getting ahead of safety and making sure that we're making investments in safety and thinking though what different risks are and how to manage them," CPUC President Alice Reynolds said.

While there have been fires at battery storage facilities in New York and at Moss Landing in California, California Energy Commission Chair David Hochschild said the state's fleet has been performing really well and reliability.

"California is actually home to the largest and fastest growing energy storage market in the world," Hochschild said. "And this is a good thing for the grid. It's a good thing for reliability and it's a good thing for our economy."

The state is one month away from hitting 10 GW of energy storage capacity, Hochschild said.

"I cannot stress how significant that is," Hochschild said. "We basically built that in five years and at a time when it's really needed both to decarbonize the grid and facilitate the adoption of more renewables."

The state is investing heavily into new technology to plant the seed for a robust battery industry, he added. California has enough lithium to supply batteries for 375 million electric vehicles, which is more than the current number of all cars in the US today, Hochschild said about the 18 mt of lithium now being developed in the state.

"I think it's fair to say that energy storage may be the defining clean energy technology of the next decade," Hochschild said.

Storage development

"We're seeing the power of storage paired with our large fleet of renewables and how it's working to clean up our grid and bring clean electricity every day to California," Reynolds said. battery storage development.

Battery storage is critically important because it captures excess energy during the day when it's generated by wind and solar, and provides that energy back into the grid during the evening ramp hours when it is needed, said David Erne, the deputy director of the California Energy Commission's Energy Assessments Division.

For example, there was 5 GW of battery storage serving load at 7 pm Feb. 10, which Molly Sterkell, who leads electric planning and market design for the CPUC's Energy Division, said is the highest level she's seen and questioned if it set a record.

California has twice as much battery storage capacity than any other state, Erne said. While California is a "sizeable force," China and India are also growing their battery storage capacity with China outpacing the US in 2022 when it reached 5 GW compared to 4 GW in the US.

"The modeling shows a substantial amount of energy storage needs to be brought online to help us meet our needs and energy storage is very critical because it helps capture energy from wind and solar that is not constant," Erne said.

Clean energy additions

"We're at an important crossroads," Sterkell said. "Storage has definitely arrived. It's here. It's here in large quantities. It's operating on the grid daily. It's providing reliability today. But, we're also planning for it to play an even larger role in the electric grid reliability in the next decade."

The CPUC's Integrated Resource Planning process, which is required by Senate Bill 350 to ensure the state's electric sector can meet its greenhouse gas emission reduction goals while maintaining reliability, seeks to reduce GHG emissions from 47 MMT in 2006 to 8 MMT by 2045, Sterkell said. At the same time, the CPUC expects 55 GW of new clean energy resources, including wind, solar and battery storage.

The California Independent System Operator uses the CPUC's IRP for transmission planning.

"So, when storage developers apply to CAISO for interconnection to the grid and they join the interconnection queue, the hope is that the transmission needed to interconnect those resources will already be underway as a result of our planning process," Sterkell said.

The CPUC has issues three procurement order, totaling 18.8 GW:

• 3.3 GW in 2019
• 11.5 GW in 2021
• 4 GW in 2023

There has been 7 GW of net qualifying capacity added, mostly battery storage, Sterkell said, adding there is about 8 GW f battery storage under contract with most of it expected to be online by 2026.