The utility industry teamed up with environmentalists Monday to try to advance what they hope to be the next big thing in clean energy advancement: “Community energy storage.”
The Community Storage Initiative, started earlier this year, significantly expanded its membership Monday to include all major segments of the utility industry, from the large investor-owned power companies, representing the bulk of power plant operators in the country, to trade groups representing both public and consumer-owned utilities.
The initiative will seek to combine the voices of industry with that of the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the nation’s most influential environment groups, to advance technologies that would lead to more renewables on the grid in the hope of reducing pollution and cutting energy costs.
“Like community solar, community storage enables consumers and utilities to share the system-wide benefits of energy storage — environmental benefits, lower costs and grid optimization — in communities large and small across the country,” the initiative said. The organization says electricity storage can maximize the benefit of distributed energy resources, such as solar panels, through “simple retrofits and program design.”
Community storage is seen as the future of making renewable energy an effective part of the nation’s electric grid for communities. It includes a number of ways to store electricity to offset the times when solar power is not producing enough electricity, or when the power grid is overtaxed.
Even though the initiative supports renewable energy, it doesn’t mean every member supports President Obama’s far-reaching climate change rules.
The American Public Power Association, one of the groups that joined the initiative Monday and which represents an influential segment of the utility industry, is one of the many groups that are challenging the president’s Clean Power Plan in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Many of the groups aligned with the initiative already have programs to advance the use of storage to benefit consumers when used with renewables.
Some of the ways to store electricity would include everything from advanced water heaters that can keep water hot all day without continuously heating it to the batteries found in an electric car or hybrid vehicle.
