Most of theoldestfossil fuel power plants in the United States are located near or in cities, making it more urgent—and more difficult—to shut them down. Now, with the changes in arcane rulesannouncedjust last week by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), it will be much easier to replace them with battery storage.
This is welcome news. The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) has long called forreplacingold plants in urban areas with battery storage facilities, which can improve grid reliability, and renewable energy. FERC’snew rulesfor connecting batteries to the power grid remove a major obstacle to using big batteries for grid reliability. What may appear to be a small change may result in significantly cleaner air across the country.
The new rules, endorsed unanimously by FERC commissioners, incorporated UCS’srecommendationabout the expected use of batteries in heavily populated areas. Because batteries can be scheduled to charge and discharge, UCS argued the demand they place on the grid is different than the demand from such typical daily activities as cooking dinner or running air conditioning on hot days.Grid plannersconsider that everyday electricity use as an unavoidable driver of peak demand. Until now, grid planners mainly assumed that the demand for energy to charge a large battery would happen at the same time the grid is most stressed by normal daily activities.
FERC’s rule change will enable grid planners to see that battery storage can be built in places where it is most needed without requiring utilities to install new transmission just to supply the batteries, which is what they used to do. Under the188bet金宝搏手机客户端下载, batteries will be able to compensate for insufficient electricity supply in areas dependent on old plants, thus accelerating thetransitionfrom fossil fuels, the decarbonization of the energy supply, and theremovalof urban pollution sources. Before these new rules, utilities coulddelayclosing old, polluting power plants until new transmission lines weredesigned and permittedto deliver peak demand electricity.
FERC’s recent action enables utilities to connect storage batteries to strategic points on the grid muchmore quicklyand cheaply thanreplacingfossil fuel plants with new transmission. In addition, storage batteries should be able to store wind and solar energy when they are most abundant, and deliver lower cost energy to consumers. Many statessupportnew investment in battery storage for just these reasons. Now FERC has lifted one of the last remaining obstacles for it to happen.