On March 28, 2022, the Maine Governor’s Energy Office (GEO) released a new report: Maine Energy Storage Market Assessment. GEO completed the report along with Energy and Environmental Economics (E3) as a result of legislation signed by Governor Janet Mills in 2021. The legislation, L.D. 528, required Maine’s energy storage market to be assessed and set a goal of 300 megawatts of installed storage capacity in the state by the end of 2025 and 400 megawatts by the end of 2030. The report looks at the landscape for energy storage in Maine, particularly highlighting opportunities and challenges in meeting their energy storage goals. Multiple stakeholders were involved in the study including utilities, industry representatives, customers, state legislators, regulators, environmental groups, and more. GEO and E3 hosted webinars to gather feedback on the study and finalize the report. Some of the key takeaways outlined in the final report included:
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Batteries will likely comprise most of the storage deployed in Maine in the next five years.
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Energy storage may help lower wholesale electricity generation cost, lower utility infrastructure costs, and lower electricity bills and increase resiliency.
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A cost benefit analysis was conducted that showed cost-effectiveness for wholesale storage while also emphasizing the need for continued cost declines.
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Customer sited storage can reduce customer bills and increase resiliency.
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Long duration energy storage will help achieve decarbonization goals.
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The primary hurdles are related to near term storage deployment. Costs have been declining but they are still too high for some potential use cases today and there are issues with interconnection limits along with challenges around monetizing certain revenue streams.
Review the announcement on the GEO website here and see the full report here.