{"id":3681,"date":"2026-02-23T08:30:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T08:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatevdo.com\/?p=3681"},"modified":"2026-04-16T08:40:42","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T08:40:42","slug":"can-a-big-battery-help-boston-save-billions-on-the","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatevdo.com\/?p=3681","title":{"rendered":"Can a big battery help Boston save billions on the\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A study from Astrap\u00e9 Consulting commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that building 3<\/span>\u00a0gigawatts of energy storage by 2030<\/span> could obviate the need for about $700<\/span> million in transmission upgrades to serve Illinois as it closes fossil-fueled power plants<\/a> to meet state climate goals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And in New York, adding battery storage as a\u00a0transmission asset could<\/a> \u200b\u201c<\/span>mitigate grid congestion, reduce renewable curtailment, and defer the uncertain need for new power lines,\u201d according to a\u00a0study by Quanta Technology on behalf of the New York Battery and Energy Storage.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But right now, it\u2019s hard to make these projects happen in the U.S., Leta said. The reason? ISO-NE<\/span> and other regional grid operators require such batteries to be exclusively used to aid the transmission grid. The battery owners cannot make money from performing other services.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201c<\/span>You have a\u00a0transmission revenue stream \u2014 that may need first priority. But you need additional revenue streams,\u201d Leta said. \u200b\u201c<\/span>The reason that hasn\u2019t happened is generally because policymakers have not allowed for those combined revenue streams.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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That\u2019s the case for the Trimount project, which won\u2019t earn money from any grid relief the battery might provide. Instead, like the other large-scale battery projects being built in Massachusetts, it will earn money through the state\u2019s Clean Peak Energy Standard<\/a>, which offers credits for charging up with renewable energy and discharging it during times of peak demand. And Trimount is seeking to contract the project to one of Massachusetts\u2019 major utilities, which are under state mandate to procure 5<\/span>\u00a0gigawatts of energy storage by 2030<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But if ISO-NE<\/span> wants to take advantage of the potential transmission savings of Trimount and similar battery projects, it may need to work with stakeholders on another way of doing it. At present, the grid operator\u2019s \u200b\u201c<\/span>storage as a\u00a0transmission-only asset\u201d (SATOA<\/span>) structure, approved by federal regulators in 2023<\/span><\/a>, bars batteries from doing anything else if they\u2019re used to relieve transmission constraints.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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There\u2019s a\u00a0market rationale for this separation<\/a>. Grid operators draw a\u00a0hard line between transmission assets and other energy-market resources like power plants and batteries. If a\u00a0battery project is collecting money for being a\u00a0transmission asset, that revenue could subsidize the other energy-market services it provides, giving it an unfair advantage over competitors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Alex Lawton, a\u00a0director at trade group Advanced Energy United, suggested that grid operators may want to find ways for batteries to make money across both energy markets and transmission services in order to use energy storage to help relieve their increasingly urgent transmission shortfalls<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201c<\/span>Yes, we are going to need to build more lines. But we want to do that cost-efficiently,\u201d he said. \u200b\u201c<\/span>If it can be solved with a\u00a0battery, that needs to at least be considered. And we want an analysis that shows all those things.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Market rules aren\u2019t the only barrier. There\u2019s also the issue of forcing these projects to be part of the glacial pace of planning, approving, and building power lines. Under ISO-NE\u2019s SATOA<\/span> plan, any battery meant to help defer a\u00a0grid build-out has to be identified through regional transmission plans, which take years to develop.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201c<\/span>We\u2019ve always advocated with long-term transmission planning that there should be a\u00a0robust process to evaluate alternative transmission technologies,\u201d he said. \u200b\u201c<\/span>Storage is, in some cases, the most cost-effective solution.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But just as companies that own power plants jealously guard their market position against new competitors, utilities that own and operate transmission grids tend to guard their incumbent advantages in winning contracts to build new power lines. ISO-NE<\/span>\u2019s current SATOA<\/span> rules don\u2019t provide incentives for transmission owners to consider adding battery storage as an alternative to building power lines, which earn them guaranteed rates of profit, Lawton noted.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Trimount project \u200b\u201c<\/span>could be a\u00a0really excellent case study to make a\u00a0case for revisiting SATOA<\/span>, and strengthening it and expanding it,\u201d he said. It will certainly be worth observing how the project\u2019s future patterns of charging up with excess clean energy and discharging during peak hours, which it\u2019s incentivized to do under the Clean Peak Energy Standard, coincide with relieving the congestion on that part of the transmission grid.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the meantime, building an enormous battery right next to a\u00a0major city will bring multiple benefits, Jupiter\u2019s Detweiler noted. The company commissioned a\u00a0study by Aurora Energy Research that found the Trimount project could save ISO-NE<\/span> customers about $1<\/span>.6<\/span> billion in capacity market costs over its 20<\/span>-year lifetime by deferring the need to build other power plants to serve the region\u2019s peak\u00a0needs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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It remains unclear how ISO-NE<\/span> will choose to incorporate the Trimount project into its transmission planning once it\u2019s operational, Detweiler said. \u200b\u201c<\/span>We are confident that they will notice when a\u00a0project like ours goes up. The question is how they do the valuation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A study from Astrap\u00e9 Consulting commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that building 3\u00a0gigawatts of energy storage by 2030 could obviate the need for about $700 million in transmission upgrades to serve Illinois as it closes fossil-fueled power plants to meet state climate goals. And in New York, adding battery storage as a\u00a0transmission […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3682,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-green-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatevdo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatevdo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatevdo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatevdo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatevdo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3681"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/climatevdo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3683,"href":"https:\/\/climatevdo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3681\/revisions\/3683"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatevdo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/climatevdo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatevdo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/climatevdo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}