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For years debate has raged over the price of carbon. Center stage this week was the difficulty of pinning down the economic, environmental and societal value of energy storage technologies. The outcome will impact the state’s ability to reach a 33 percent renewable energy mandate in California, according to stakeholders in a California Public Utilities Commission Sept. 20 energy storage workshop. Assemblymember Nancy Skinner (D-Oakland) noted the challenge of assigning “an exact value to intangibles” related to storing intermittent power supplies—including cleaner air because of more alternative energy and less fossil fuel generation— and determining the cost of not investing in energy storage projects. Other intangible values are higher levels of energy efficiency and energy security from advances and increases in renewable energy supplies. “Putting a price on a resource or activity is very difficult, especially in this economy,” said Skinner. The lawmaker authored AB 2514, enacted last year. It directs the commission to assess the investor-owned utilities’ need for energy storage investments. If regulators decide that the utilities should invest in pumped hydro facilities, batteries, or other energy storage technologies, regulators are to set storage targets for 2015 and 2020. Panelists debated at Tuesday’s commission workshop whether to invest in or further study the pros and cons of various storage technologies aimed at different supply and demand purposes. “We have to have trial tariffs with hardware in the field,” and real performance data. “The marketplace will show what the current market can do with incentives installed on the customer side of the meter,” said Byron Washom, University of California, San Diego, director of strategic energy initiatives. He pointed out that California showed leadership on groundbreaking energy efficiency and demand-response—two policies that were executed without countless academic studies, avoiding being “published to death.” Robert Schainker, Electric Power Research Institute senior technical executive in the power delivery and utilization sector, disagreed, saying energy storage involved too many uncertainties. He called for more studies. Like Skinner, Schainker noted inexact value assumptions on storage, including unknowns about how to characterize the technologies—as generation, transmission, or “something in between.” The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is considering its own category for storage which is none of the above. In addition to how to value various storage technologies is the question of whether most of the technologies will be centralized and controlled by utilities or decentralized and closer to the consumer. Washom said the way forward on storage was decentralization. “The speed of digital energy suggests that it will be decentralized energy storage.” “It is premature to say decentralized is better,” countered Joe Desmond, BrightSource Energy senior vice president of government affairs. Some are concerned about the risks of using public funds to advance emerging energy storage projects. Panelists were asked whether the risk could be on par with that taken by the federal government when committing financial support to solar panel manufacturer Solyndra and its bankruptcy. It was the first solar company to land a $535 million federal loan guarantee and recently went bankrupt. Craig Horne, EnerVault Corp. president, pointed out the billions of dollars of existing subsides given to traditional energy, including nuclear energy plants. “We are putting a lot on line out there everyday with existing technologies that have a risky technology and don’t have to worry about the cost of insurance,” he said. Under the federal Price-Anderson Act, nuclear power plant owners’ liability is limited, with taxpayers on the hook for damages that exceed set caps.

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