Democrat lawmakers in Michigan have proposed a bill requiring utilities to have a combined 2,500MW of energy storage online by 2030, and are mulling a specific target for long-duration technologies.
House Bill 4256 is being sponsored by state representative Jenn Hill and would require state-regulated utilities to have a combined total of 2,500MW of battery storage capacity in operation by December 31, 2029. It is co-sponsored by 19 other Democrats.
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The proposal includes a requirement that at least 50% of the energy storage capacity be owned by an entity other than the electric utilities themselves, and that the utility must procure the project’s energy under a (at least) 15-year contract.
Those contracts would also have certain criteria. One is that the energy storage systems would need to be able to participate in wholesale electricity markets and provide all services that the technology is capable of doing.
The Bill also has stipulations around providing long-term revenues to support third-party financing and ensuring increased value for electric customers.
Its authors also want to see a study to determine procurement targets specifically for long-duration energy storage systems (LDES) and ‘multiday energy storage systems’. The Bill defined LDES as storage systems with a discharge duration of 10 hours or more.
The proposal mirrors an interim target proposed in the The Michigan Healthy Climate Plan, launched in April last year by the state’s governor Gretchen Whitmer. That followed on from the US state’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy (EGLE) recommending the 2,500MW 2030 target in a report a month prior, both covered by Energy-Storage.news at the time.
The state falls within the territory operated by regional transmission system operator (TSO) Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO).
Although downstream large-scale energy storage deployments have been few and far between in Michigan, it is the site of some notable battery and battery component manufacturing projects.
US firm Our Next Energy (ONE) is set to open a new lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cell gigafactory in Van Buren in 2024 while a new sodium-ion battery plant is being built by Natron Energy and Clarios International on the site of an existing lithium-ion plant in Meadowbrook.
See the House Bill 4256 in full below.
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