Peter Key at EnergyBiz covers Washington State's energy storage projects stemming from the Clean Energy Fund I. Here's an excerpt:
The future of utility-scale energy storage could soon be on display in the Pacific Northwest.
Three Washington state utilities are deploying a total of five cutting-edge systems that will be evaluated by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. Three of the systems were constructed according to a set of standards designed to make utility-scale storage systems easier and cheaper to build, and two use a new type of battery system based on technology developed at the lab.
The utilities received a total of $14.3 million from the state's Clean Energy Fund for the energy-storage projects and had to put up an equal amount themselves.
"In all three cases, it really was a situation where they wanted to try out some new technologies that could be integrated into their systems, but [the technologies] weren't at the stage of maturity to be able to justify all of the costs" of the projects, said Tony Usibelli, the director of the Washington State Energy Office, which administers the Clean Energy Fund.