DOE officials tout energy storage, industry-government partnerships
WASHINGTON — State regulators can help hasten the deployment of energy storage and continue to collaborate with the federal government and energy providers to protect critical infrastructure from cyberattacks and a host of other hazards that could disrupt services, two U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) leaders said during a Feb. 9 session at the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) 2020 Winter Policy Summit held here.
Bruce Walker, assistant secretary at DOE’s Office of Electricity, and Karen Evans, assistant secretary in the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) at DOE, discussed their offices’ overall efforts and highlighted several topics of interest.
Walker, for example, said that as energy storage and microgrids become considerably more critical to ensure grid reliability and to protect national security, DOE’s Office of Electricity and the national labs have prioritized faster deployment of energy storage and there’s federal funding to back up their research and development efforts, he said: $5 million this year, $40 million in 2021, and $30 million in 2022.
“The Office of Electricity works to develop new technologies to increase the resilience of the infrastructure that carries electricity across our country and works to improve the federal and state policies that shape electricity system planning,” Walker told NARUC members during a joint subcommittees session on Sunday.
His office also is laying the framework for a modern electricity system by contributing to the development and implementation of electricity policy at the federal and state level, he added.
Walker also highlighted the Grid Storage Launchpad that was unveiled in DOE’s fiscal year 2020 budget proposal to advance new energy storage technologies, which stakeholders think will allow energy to be saved for later use, help balance the power grid, benefit consumers and energy-sector players, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The launchpad is hosted at the Pacific Northwest National Lab (PNNL) and focuses on developing, testing and evaluating batteries and other materials and systems for grid applications, Walker said, adding that the collaboration is between PNNL, the Office of Electricity and DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
And while DOE is focused on bringing down the price for storage, Walker suggested that state utility regulators also should consider revising their model for analyzing the value of energy storage to help spur faster deployment.
For example, Walker suggested using the investor-owned utility model, which basically calls for making large investments and then depreciates those costs over time.
In separate comments during NARUC’s joint session, DOE Assistant Secretary Evans discussed industry-government partnerships, among other topics.
“The Department of Energy is committed to working with all our partners to secure U.S. critical energy infrastructure,” said Evans, who added that she’s “particularly looking forward to working with NARUC,” which is the association representing state public service commissioners who regulate essential utility services such as water, energy and telecommunications.
“I’m happy to see that many of the things that we’re working on that we’ve identified as priorities, you’ve identified as priorities, as well,” she told NARUC subcommittee members.
For example, a top priority for CESER is to make the nation’s electric power grid and oil and natural gas infrastructure resilient to cyberthreats.
With 90 percent of the nation’s power infrastructure privately held, coordinating and aligning efforts between the government and the private sector is critical, Evans said, so CESER works closely with representatives of the energy sector, companies that manufacture energy technologies, the National Laboratories, universities, other government agencies, and other stakeholders toward that goal.
This year, she added, CESAR plans to have some incentives for utilities to be involved in related programs that will allow them “to deploy and amalgamate some of the mitigation techniques and technologies” being developed by the federal interagency group working to implement a recent executive order.
Evans also urged NARUC members to “please be involved” in such cross-collaborative efforts as they unfold, as well as in existing work handled by CESER staff and partners.
