Energy Storage Integration Council (ESIC) Strategy Meeting 

September 26, 2023

By Alyssa McQuilling

The Electric Power Research Institute’s (EPRI) Energy Storage Integration Council (ESIC) held a Strategy Meeting on September 14, 2023 at the JW Marriott in Indianapolis to focus on identifying the energy storage gaps and how ESIC can address them.  

The mission of ESIC is to advance the deployment and integration of energy storage systems through open, technical collaboration.  

This meeting was open to the technical community of energy storage stakeholders, such as electric utilities, energy storage developers and integrators, regulators, system operators, independent power producers, and research and consulting organizations.  

As the technical voice of the lead battery industry, CBI sent US Research and Innovation Manager, Dr. Alyssa McQuilling, to share and collaborate on industry insights.  

Her takeaways from the event included:  

• Utilities not only want but are ready for battery energy storage systems “to be a product not a project” (a phrase heard often during the meeting). The standardization of performance, requirements, RFP process will be critical to increasing the rate of energy storage integration in the future. 
• Long duration energy storage is an emerging segment of the energy storage space and will require a broad range of technologies to meet utility demands. 

• As an industry, we still need to better define “long duration," describe the duty cycle, and specify a protocol for its evaluation. There are a range of scenarios where lead batteries can meet the needs for long duration energy storage.  

• EPRI ESIC is working on a number of products (in collaboration with utilities, developers, and researchers) to help support industry needs.  These include tools to evaluate O&M needs, processes to understand the valuation of energy storage and other distributed resources, guidance needed on safety requirements, as well as requests for proposals in future work areas.  
• Overall, the industry needs better data sharing so that ‘lessons learned’ can be applied (without having to learn them over and over again). 

• Utilities and developers still want improvements from the battery storage industry for areas such as safety, operational reliability, and controls integration. 

Lastly, the six national labs have to a role to play in getting emerging technologies ‘over the hump’ in terms of development. This includes those opportunities created through Grid Storage Launchpad and ROVI (Rapid Operational Validation Initiative).

We look forward to seeing CBI’s members transform projects into products that can benefit industry and utilities in meeting their renewable integration and decarbonization goals.