Dive Brief:
- California will solicit up to 2 GW of long-duration energy storage resources as part of a 10.6-GW centralized procurement for emerging clean energy technologies to be deployed between 2031 and 2037, the California Public Utilities Commission said Aug. 26.
- Set to begin in 2026, the planned energy storage solicitations will request bids for up to 1 GW of resources with durations of at least 12 hours and 1 GW of multi-day storage resources that can be commissioned between 2031 and 2037, the CPUC said in a fact sheet accompanying the announcement.
- The procurement also includes up to 1 GW of geothermal energy generation that can be commissioned between 2031 and 2037 and 7.6 GW of floating offshore wind generation that can be commissioned between 2035 and 2037. Solicitations for those resources will begin in 2027, the CPUC said.
Dive Insight:
The forthcoming solicitations are part of a centralized procurement strategy authorized in a law passed by the California legislature earlier this year. The California Department of Water Resources will lead the procurement through its Statewide Energy Office, which focuses on “emerging and existing technologies that need scaling to lower costs,” the CPUC said.
The CPUC advised DWR to conduct a series of solicitations and evaluate bids for quality, cost, and risk, subject to a CPUC review.
Having one agency lead the procurement “will streamline the acquisition of advanced energy resources, potentially lowering future costs for ratepayers and accelerating the development timeline for clean energy technologies,” the CPUC said.
As of late 2022, California load-serving entities had committed to build only about 510 MW of LDES resources through 2035, significantly less than the 2 GW envisioned in the procurement strategy announced this month, according to an April 2024 CPUC analysis.
A December analysis by The Brattle Group found the California Independent System Operator footprint may need 5 GW of LDES resources by 2045, if it retains its gas generation or up to 37 GW of LDES resources if it fully retires gas generation.
“[The] procurement authorization issues a challenge to the industry, and we want to see developers deliver on the immense potential of these technologies to deliver tangible ratepayer benefits and cost efficiencies with the economies of scale we are enabling here,” CPUC Commissioner John Reynolds said in a statement.
California’s announcement comes two months after New York committed at least $5 million to a competitive solicitation process to procure storage resources with durations of at least 10 hours, as it works to facilitate the deployment of 6 GW of storage by 2030. New York’s energy storage road map aims for storage resources with durations of at least eight hours to account for at least 20% of future bulk storage procurements.
In June, the California Energy Commission awarded $26.7 million to three LDES projects that will serve low-income and tribal communities. Those include a 1.5-MW/6.6-MWh zinc bromine flow battery system connected to a microgrid serving the Barona Group of Capitan Grande Band of Mission Indians; a 3-MWh thermochemical energy storage system serving the University of California at San Diego’s medical campus; and a 100-kW/10-MWh reversible carbon dioxide-to-carbon storage system that will pair with an existing 7-MW solar photovoltaic facility to provide up to 100 hours of capacity. The Barona Group and UC-San Diego batteries will be capable of discharging continuously for at least 24 hours.
California has drawn proposals for larger LDES developments as well. Hydrostor is developing a 500 MW/4,000 MWh facility in Kern County, California, that will be capable of continuous discharge for at least eight hours, the company says. Hydrostor’s advanced compressed air system is one of the few “bankable” LDES technologies today, CEO Curtis VanWallaghem told Utility Dive earlier this year.
In public comments during the development of CPUC’s LDES procurement strategy, Hydrostor and other LDES developers argued in favor of reducing the shorter LDES category’s duration threshold from 12 hours to eight hours “to comport with current definitions elsewhere, including in resource adequacy,” according to a CPUC summary of the comments. CPUC declined to make the change, arguing that “our purpose here is to develop additional longer-duration options,” while acknowledging that markets for 12-hour resources may take time to develop.
