ERCOT's Director of Grid Coordination discusses the rise of battery storage in Texas

ERCOT saw 1.4 GW of new standalone battery storage projects proposed in August continuing the two-year surge of Texas for these assets.

By year end, ERCOT expects to have 459 MW of battery storage installed, and over 1.5 GW of total additions, including “Cumulative MW Synchronized” — projects that have been approved but have not passed all qualification testing to begin operations on the grid — projects with interconnection agreements signed and financial security posted and more, according to the grid operator’s Capacity by Fuel Type Charts. In 2019, that total figure was 104 MW.

Overall, there are 44 storage projects in pre-development in the Lonestar State, including the Broad Reach Power-backed projects. Other developers are building solar + storage projects such as Enel Green Power, Orsted and 8minute Solar Energy.

ERCOT’s attention to the growing battery space and its uptake of renewable energy encouraged battery developers to consider Texas for projects, said ERCOT’s Director of Grid Coordination, Bill Blevins in an interview with NPM.

“We do have a lot of renewables within the ERCOT footprint so it would probably make sense that people are going to want to take that energy and put it into a battery and reuse it for some other later period,” Blevins said. “So, I think it would just be natural that you'd have storage built here. But I think some of the focus we did on coming up with some software changes that will take advantage of what a battery can do, and then kind of writing some rules on how we want to use them were also some key drivers.”

Lithium batteries still “seem to be the most prevalent” technology in ERCOT’s footprint, Blevins said. He’s watching alternative battery technologies in other regions and expects that, if they come to ERCOT, it will be at a small-scale until proven reliable.

To chart storage’s arc in the Texas grid, the early years of wind and solar generation can provide some clues.

The adoption of wind in Texas had a ramp up period from between 2008 and 2012/2014, Blevins said, as transmission infrastructure was built to accommodate the new power and get it to load centers.

“As (the Competitive Renewable Energy Zone) got built in 2014 ... it saw a steady, continued level of wind … 2018 might have been where we start to see and it kind of flattened out,” Blevins said. “Solar started to pick up and I'm not certain it's going to flatten out for the next few years probably. And then energy storage looks like it's just following that same pattern that we've seen on the other technologies. kind of really just all revolves around having transmission to get those renewables into the grid.”