Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Energy Policy topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Senate renews energy storage grant program to spur community-scale battery projects
Summary
Senators advanced SB78, a grant program through the Office of Economic Development to support energy storage demonstrations and startup capital; sponsor highlighted a solar-plus-battery residential development as an example and said the $1.5 million grand prize requested last year was removed.
Senate Bill 78 would create an Energy Storage Innovation Research and Grant Program through the Office of Economic Development to incentivize capital and pilot projects for energy storage and distributed generation.
Sponsor Senator Fillmore told colleagues the measure mirrors a bill from the prior session but without a previously proposed $1.5 million grand prize that had been requested of the governor’s office last year. He described an example development with rooftop solar and in-unit batteries that operate as a distributed virtual power plant, storing daytime generation for use in the evening and relieving grid demand.
"That's the kind of innovative project that I think that we need in order to build security for our power grid infrastructure, self reliance for energy for families, and to...bring the price of energy storage down so that it can be deployed at scale," Fillmore said. The sponsor offered the bill for third reading with no further questions from the floor. The clerk reported the tally as 23 yea, 4 nay, 2 absent and the bill will be read a third time.
Implementation and oversight: The bill designates the Office of Economic Development to administer grants and incentives; specific program rules and prize amounts are subject to program design and appropriation. The sponsor described private-sector examples and argued state incentives can accelerate commercialization and grid resilience.
