California’s Energy Storage Mandate

California’s AB 2514 (2010) called on the state to establish an energy storage mandate. California’s Public Utility Commission accordingly approved a 1.3GW storage target for the state to be achieved by 2020. The program’s progress has been guided by the ISO’s California Roadmap for Advancing and Maximizing the Value of Energy Storage Technology. As of August 2019, California’s program remains the only one in the country to break the target into buckets for transmission-, distribution-, and customer-connected projects, as determined in a 2013 Order. In a January 2018 Order the CPUC adopted 11 new planning rules that require utilities to consider the multiple uses of energy storage in their resource planning, forcing utilities to account for otherwise uncompensated storage values in their planning.