The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has unanimously approved a decision to require Southern California Edison (SCE) to procure between 1.4 GW and 1.8 GW of energy resource capacity in the Los Angeles basin to meet long-term local capacity requirements by 2021. At least 50 MW of this amount must be procured from energy-storage resources, and 600 MW must be procured from preferred resources.
Under the CPUC's final decision, energy-storage resources must be considered ‘along with preferred resources’ – including energy efficiency, demand response and distributed generation – consistent with the clean energy resource procurement priorities embodied in California's Energy Action Plan.
‘The required energy-storage procurement under this decision provides a much-needed market signal that energy storage will be considered as a key asset class to help California address its long-term local reliability needs," says Janice Lin, executive director of the California Energy Storage Alliance and managing partner of Strategen Consulting LLC.
The decision will have an immediate impact, as SCE is directed to file an application for each local reliability area seeking approval of contracts by late this year or early next year.
