New England has become a hub for giant grid batteries.

This story was first published canary media Reprinted here as part of. climate desk collaboration.

huge new battery It’s very difficult to keep track of which one is the largest in a particular region because it’s always displayed on a grid. That’s certainly the case in New England. In New England, severe electricity demand and strong state climate goals are driving the expansion of large batteries that continue to break capacity records.

canary media We recently covered the dedication of the 175-megawatt Crosstown Battery in Gorham, Maine. The battery was the largest in New England when it began operations in late November. But that trophy has already been handed to a 250-megawatt facility in Medway, Massachusetts, southwest of Boston and about 16 miles from the Patriots’ Gillette Stadium.

Medway’s battery became fully operational on February 25, according to developer VC Renewables, a subsidiary of global energy trader Vitol. “To be fair, I also don’t expect Medway to hold that title for long,” said Tom Bitting, managing director at Advantage Capital, which backed the project with a $158 million tax equity deal. ​“There are other, much larger batteries being developed in New England, but I think it all just shows that we need it and the demand for it is huge.”

For example, Jupiter Power, a leading player in Texas’ burgeoning grid storage market, is developing a 700-megawatt-hour, 2.8-gigawatt-hour Tri-Mount battery plant on a former oil storage facility in Everett, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. Jupiter aims to complete the project in 2028 or 2029. Tri-Mount was slated to be one of the largest free-standing batteries in the United States, and Vistra’s battery in Moss Landing, Calif., set the record at 750 megawatts/3 gigawatt hours, but much of that capacity was destroyed in a tragic fire.

The wave of battery megaprojects has ushered in a new chapter for a region that until recently was focused on small-scale battery manufacturing. Massachusetts encouraged this by mandating energy storage alongside many distributed solar projects paid for through the state’s main solar power incentive. This rule created systems ranging from 1 to 5 megawatts.

Large batteries began to become popular in the West in the late 2010s. In California, Arizona, and Nevada, developers can enter into long-term contracts to provide grid capacity. And Texas can bid on its own competitive market.

New England’s first three major batteries, Plus Power’s Cranberry Point and Cross Town, and Aeolian’s previously developed Medway, were awarded seven-year contracts to provide capacity to New England’s power grid in 2021, but the grid operator later shortened those types of contracts to one year. Since this change, developers have suffered from a lack of long-term capacity revenue. You can charge when prices are low and sell when prices are high, but it’s an unpredictable source of income that lenders may not want to take on.

Massachusetts has successfully built a powerhouse of small-scale solar power, generating nearly half of the region’s demand on a recent sunny spring day. But leaders recognized that batteries were needed to continue cleaning the power grid during times when solar power wasn’t being generated. So they created a new policy push for storage investments called the Clean Peak Standard, which officially went into effect in 2020.

The rule mandates that utilities provide clean electricity for a certain percentage of peak demand hours, a goal that grows each year. Companies that use batteries to conserve solar energy for the night, when electricity consumption increases as people get home from work or school, can earn credits they can sell to power companies and secure some revenue outside of the wholesale market.

Democratic Gov. Maura Healey’s administration believes storage is an important tool to improve energy affordability, Department of Energy Under Secretary Michael Judge said, because storage makes better use of existing grid infrastructure to meet peak demand.

“It stores all the solar energy that we produce during the day, reducing the cost of operating the system for everyone,” he said. ​“You don’t have to run these peakers and you also get the integration of all the emissions benefits and clean energy benefits.”

It took a few years for this rule to actually power batteries in the hundreds of megawatts range, but that era has now begun. For example, Mr Bitting noted that Advantage Capital took into account the proceeds from the Clean Peak Standard when analyzing and underwriting the investment in the Medway project. A total of 725 megawatts of battery storage met clean peak standards as of early March, according to state data.

Stand-alone grid battery projects are also boosted by federal tax credits that can reduce investment costs by 30 percent, an incentive the Trump administration preserved in last summer’s budget law even as it cut support for wind, solar and electric vehicles.

Clean Peak’s cash alone cannot pay the bill. Battery developers still need to make money in the market. Although there are no long-term capacity contracts in New England, at least two factors favor energy storage companies in the region. These are the highest electricity prices in the country and an increase in electricity demand.

“Bringing additional generation online in densely populated areas is very difficult, because regardless of the type of generation you build, you need a lot of space,” Bitting said. But batteries can fit a lot of power into a relatively small footprint without creating smokestacks and pollution that make it difficult to build new fossil fuel power plants in densely populated areas.

Batteries compete directly with gas power plants to provide electricity during peak demand periods when prices are highest. This is especially valuable in New England, where gas supplies are stretched thin between generating electricity and heating on the coldest days of the year.

“As the weather gets colder, households will continue to demand it,” Bitting said. ​“However, if we can alleviate some of the peaks on the power supply side, it will provide a safety valve for supply.”

Jupiter Power’s giant Trimount project continues New England’s foray into large batteries and will have the capacity to discharge enough power to power about 500,000 homes, according to the developer. Tri-Mount was the largest of four battery projects selected in December from a statewide public offering in Massachusetts to provide more clean peak power. Previously, battery owners could sell Clean Peak credits on a quarterly or annual basis. The new offering is designed to create “cost-effective” long-term contracts for storage, allowing developers to plan for more stable revenues. Healey also doubled grid storage with a March 16 executive order calling for an additional 5 gigawatts of capacity to be installed by 2035.

“This type of policy signal, combined with the state’s grid reliability challenges and decarbonization efforts, creates the conditions for significant investment,” Hans Detwiler, Jupiter’s senior director of development, said in an email.

Massachusetts officials also hope to speed up development with new permitting rules that would run large-scale battery applications through state-level agencies rather than a gradual local process. While community members can continue to have input, the program has a clear 15-month timeline and allows for only one appeal to the state Supreme Court for more timely resolution of disputes in the permitting process.

The real test of all these policies is whether the latest megabatteries will be the start of a trend or remain bold outliers in the region’s energy system.