Role of storage technologies for increased deployment of distributed and renewable resources

[Summary form only given]. To achieve California´s 33 percent renewable energy goals in 2020 California must now start building new electricity storage to support the alternative power supplies. Many other states also have aggressive renewables goals. In California´s urban centers, such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, it is now next to impossible to site new fossil generation and obtain necessary air permits, so building new fossil plants there is not practical. A further challenge is that we are losing the fossil plants that have historically provided adjustments to balance unpredictable renewable energy production. And, construction of major new transmission lines into urban areas encounters opposition and can take many years. Distributed storage is the only practical, large-scale and clean option for integrating a 33 percent variable renewable energy portfolio. Fast, clean and deep storage will be a lower cost alternative for providing faster dispatchability than fossil alternatives. This paper advocates a storage portfolio standard of 5 percent of peak demand for fast, clean, deep and distributed new storage by 2020. This would provide about 4 GW of storage by 2020. One GW might be installed in the San Francisco area, 2 GW in the Los Angeles area, and 1 GW in the San Diego area.