Energy storage’s unique operating characteristics — it can be load or supply — have made market participation a complicated problem. But California now has interim rules designed to address some of the difficulties and to ensure storage resources are providing all the services they can while also being properly valued.
In the order, the CPUC acknowledged that current market rules, including utility standard contracts and program tariffs, fail to support the ability of an energy resource to access more than one service. Known as “stacking,” it would include incremental values to the wholesale market, distribution grid, transmission system, resource adequacy requirements and customers.
