The Energy Department plans to announce Friday up to $325 million for 15 projects to accelerate the deployment of long-duration energy storage, a key component of integrating renewable energy into the power grid.
The projects, funded by the infrastructure law enacted in 2021, emphasize workforce, climate, and grid reliability benefits along with cost savings to consumers, according to an announcement shared in advance with Bloomberg Law.
“We’re having several different win-wins,” David Crane, the DOE’s under secretary for infrastructure, told Bloomberg Law. “We’re not only going to be demonstrating technologies at scale, but we found projects that are directly going to positively impact communities of need.”
As more intermittent renewable energy is connected to the grid, large-scale batteries can store the energy produced during sunny and windy hours and dispatch power when the sun goes down and wind stops blowing. The DOE aims to reduce the cost of grid-scale energy storage by 90% by 2030.
Current battery technology can generally only dispatch for four hours, one of the limitations identified in the DOE’s Pathways to Commercial Liftoff report published this year. As much as 460 gigawatts of long-lasting storage capacity may be needed to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from the US economy by 2050, representing $330 billion in cumulative capital requirements, the report estimated.
Electric utilities are clamoring for longer-lasting batteries, Crane said. The private sector chipped in more than the minimum 50% cost share for the projects, he said, bringing total public-private investment to about $800 million.
“I actually spend a fair amount of time in this job with utility CEOs, and I have never heard anyone say: Nah, we’re fine with the four-hour storage,” Crane said from the sidelines of Climate Week in New York City.
Crane called out one project, led by a subsidiary of
Another project will install batteries in Alaska’s North Slope, near the site of a coal plant slated to retire. A children’s hospital in an under-served community in California will receive a new supply of back-up power thanks to one awardee.
Two projects involve the reuse of retired electric vehicle batteries at affordable housing complexes and senior centers. When electric vehicle batteries are no longer suitable for transportation, the decommissioned battery may still have 70% or more of its remaining capacity, the project description states.
Taken together, the DOE-funded projects—led by a variety of energy companies and technology providers—should ultimately encourage risk-averse state regulators to allow utilities to recover costs of storage investments from rate-paying customers, Crane said.
“There’s vast recognition within the utility world that this area is important—and that the DOE plays a critical role by advancing the technology to the point where the public service commissions are willing to give rate-based recovery,” Crane said.
The battery program is among tens of billions of dollars in clean energy infrastructure the department is spending following the 2021 law.
Crane, the department’s Senate-confirmed infrastructure programs chief, said the looming threat of a long-lasting government shutdown was a concern.
“We’re very aware that we’re on the clock,” he said. “We’re on the clock in the fight against climate change. We’re on the clock in terms of the tenure of this administration. So we don’t want to miss a day.”
If there is a shutdown, “we’ll just work harder when we come back,” Crane said.
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