[Episode #134] – Storage Grows Up

Battery storage in the US has grown ten-fold in just five years, and its growth is only accelerating. Just a single utility procurement announced in May of this year was for four times as much utility battery capacity as existed in the entire US five years ago.

But battery storage isn’t just getting bigger. It’s also stretching well beyond utility-scale frequency control into new applications and market segments. In fact, fully one-third of the installed battery capacity in the US now is actually on the customer side of the meter, where it is being used to do things like mitigate demand charges and provide resilience—for example, allowing a microgrid to keep functioning when grid power is shut off in a wildfire event.

And then there are all the other kinds of non-battery storage, which are finding new momentum as well. It’s an exciting time of rapid evolution in the storage sector. To help us understand it all, Jason Burwen, the Vice President of Policy at the Energy Storage Association who last joined us back in Episode #8, returns to the show for this very wonky but highly informative look at the changing market, policy environment, and technologies of storage.

Guest:

Jason Burwen is Vice President of Policy at the Energy Storage Association. Previously, Jason was the Associate Director for Energy Innovation at the Bipartisan Policy Center. He also served as staff director of the American Energy Innovation Council. Jason has also consulted to utilities on demand response program design at FSC Group/Nexant and reviewed utility renewable energy procurement contracting for the California Public Utilities Commission. Jason holds Masters degrees from the University of California – Berkeley’s Energy and Resource Group and Goldman School of Public Policy, as well as a Bachelor’s degree from Columbia University.

On Twitter: @jburwen

On the Web: energystorage.org

Recording date: September 23, 2020

Air date: November 11, 2020

Geek rating: 9