FERC issued Order No. 841 to remove barriers to the participation of energy storage resources in the capacity, energy, and ancillary services markets operated by RTOs and ISOs by striking a balance between prescriptive requirements and high-level directives. It requires that RTOs/ISOs establish a participation model for energy storage that properly recognizes its physical and operational characteristics and ensures its participation in the markets as both a buyer and a seller.

The renewable industry continues to gain ground on conventional power solutions.  Contracting with solar power producers allows consumers to meet important social and legal mandates, but there have historically been two major disadvantages of solar projects as compared to conventional plants – price and intermittency. 

The most common use case of late for integrating storage with DG solar has been to help with demand charge reduction (to be fair, we also see a lot of interest in peak demand reduction and frequency regulation, with several other use cases coming on strong).

Old regulations for a now-repealed solar tax credit provide the framework for how people currently think about storage from a tax standpoint.

The first question is whether storage even qualifies for a credit in the first place.