Government Energy Policy, Business and Technology

FERC Allows Energy Storage to Play in Nationwide Wholesale Markets

Greentech Media: The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has passed a rule that will open U.S. wholesale energy markets to energy storage on an equal footing with generators and other grid resources. But it hasn’t yet figured out how to address the same challenge for distributed energy resources.

On Thursday, FERC commissioners unanimously approved the final version of a rule, first proposed in November 2016, designed to “remove barriers to the participation of electric storage resources” in the wholesale energy markets that make up about three-quarters of the country’s electricity supply.

Within the next nine months, each of these regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) will be required to come back with a plan for revising its tariffs to establish a participation mode for energy storage, “consisting of market rules that, recognizing the physical and operational characteristics of electric storage resources, facilitates their participation” across the range of markets that make up a regional transmission grid.

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