A significant, if small, change happened to New England’s energy mix in the last couple of weeks: Batteries have joined the fray.
As you’ll see from this screenshot of ISO-NE’s website on Monday, May 26, front-of-meter batteries are now among sources listed on the resource chart. ISO-NE only just started including them this month, presumably because the state’s biggest battery-storage system, in Maine, came online. They’re been part of the mix on other ISOs, notable California and Texas, for a while.
Batteries are barely a rounding error at the moment here but will be an increasingly important part of our electric grid because they can time-shift cheap energy (solar and wind) to make it more valuable. Their use is growing at leaps and bounds all over the world, and that includes behind-the-meter batteries in people’s homes, as I noted in a recent piece.
Batteries and solar are the main reason that the U.S. electric grid is in good shape this summer, says the North American Electric Reliability Corp., which oversees the U.S. and Canadian electric systems. Canary Media story is here.
