Utility advocates say Illinois’ SB25 will shift planning to regulators and accelerate battery storage

Sarah Moscowitz, a policy advocate with the Citizens Utility Board, told the Kane County Energy and Environmental Committee on March 13 that the recently signed Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act (commonly called SB25 or "SERGA") will transfer major planning decisions from the legislature to regulators and speed deployment of battery storage to address near-term supply pressures.

"This is going to be a very big deal," Moscowitz said, describing a new integrated resource planning process to be run by the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) that will model the state’s future electricity needs and recommend program and procurement changes. The first integrated resource plan must be filed by Nov. 16 of this year, she said.

The nut of the legislation, Moscowitz told the committee, is to give regulators authority and programmatic tools — not to directly order utilities to build generation but to design incentives, procurements and targets that shift the supply-demand balance. SB25 includes a battery-storage procurement program and a framework for income-qualified storage rebates, she said.

"SERGA creates an integrated resource planning process at the Illinois Commerce Commission whereby the ICC runs a docketed proceeding to look at our resource mix, meaning like where our power is coming from, how much electricity we're going to need in the state of Illinois, and what, if any, kinds of changes do we need to make," Moscowitz said. She added that the goal is to ground targets and budgets in modeling rather than periodic legislative negotiation.

Committee members pressed Moscowitz on the bill’s likely effects on data centers, which have driven recent demand spikes in the region. Moscowitz said Illinois faces competition from neighboring states for data-center investment and that SB25 is intended in part to blunt volatile wholesale-supply pricing at PJM by accelerating storage and enabling targeted procurement to cover peak needs. She also said separate pieces of legislation are being considered to address data centers’ heat, water use and siting.

The presentation also briefly touched on nuclear power. Moscowitz said SB25 largely lifted a moratorium and directed regulators to study new nuclear costs and timelines; she said the ICC will likely issue requests for information from potential developers to gauge feasibility. Several committee members and public commentators urged that small modular reactors and additional nuclear capacity be considered as part of a balanced response to rising demand.

Moscowitz urged residents and officials to follow the ICC docket once it opens and noted that the Citizens Utility Board will monitor filings and participate in regulatory proceedings. "Implementation of this legislation is where the real work comes in," she said. "It will make or break our clean-energy goals in Illinois and affect affordability for bills."