IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2017 - 110

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sustainability, and future readiness, the final challenge is this: How do we engage as stakeholders to
scale storage into our investment choices today? The
clue resides in the success stories featured in this
article-the common thread across these cases is
all-source procurement. All-source markets, planning, and procurement are focused on meeting the
needs of the buyer in a technology-agnostic way
that properly recognizes the characteristics of each
technology under consideration. They can take the
form of generation versus storage versus demand
response or energy efficiency versus transmission versus storage or any combination that is
practical for the buyer. When we focus on allsource procurements through a lens of least cost
plus best fit, the industry maximizes value for all
stakeholders and meets the objective of being prudent and progressive.
Regulators are starting to take notice. In a stunningly simple but powerful move, the Washington
Utilities and Transportation Commission in
the state of Washington has mandated that all future
investment-rate cases brought by the utility companies must demonstrate that energy storage solutions
were fully considered to meet the needs and that all
of the differentiating drivers of value from advanced
storage were considered in any evaluation. Public
utility commissions and other regulators across the
globe are increasingly taking this approach because it
would be imprudent to exclude such proven, capable
storage solutions from their jurisdictions.
With the recent moves to properly include
storage in the planning and procurement of our
electricity systems, we are seeing an acceleration
of its adoption. AES views the scaling of storage
as so important to our mission of improving lives
with energy solutions that we have created a team
and solution platform to enable our peers to
join us in implementing storage across the globe.
The groundbreaking 30-MW/120-MWh facility
in Escondido, California, developed and commissioned by San Diego Gas & Electric, used AES's
Advancion platform to allow it to accelerate
the scale and adoption of advanced battery storage into its network.
Reflecting on electricity's role as a foundational
infrastructure of society, we now have a way to fund
the transition to a high penetration of renewables
and a more resilient grid by considering storage as
an alternative to the investments that utilities and
markets have in their existing plans. Storage is not
an add-on or merely a stunt double-it is a costsaving, reliability-enhancing, renewable-absorbing
action hero.
p&e

110

ieee power & energy magazine

september/october 2017
http://www.ieeecollabratec.org
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine - September/October 2017
