I moderated a roundtable earlier this week at a storage conference on energy storage + load growth in PJM. The main Q: CAISO & ERCOT have ~10,000 MW+ of storage each. PJM has <500 MW. Wtf??!! Several developers & investors raised great points worth sharing. 1- Renewables penetration - This is an obvious one, wind + solar is not huge in PJM unlike ERCOT or CAISO creating less volatility. PJM States import a lot of RECs from MISO - But hey, SPP has HUGE amounts of wind, LOT of negative pricing, and less batteries than PJM!! Clearly RE penetration is not the only reason and anyway this will change with lot of solar coming online 2- ELCC risk - With not much energy arbitrage, capacity market is important for revenues. But storage accreditation is variable and projections are heading down. For 4-hr, from ~60% ELCC today to just 25%(!!) in 2032. Investors are obviously wary - One solution: allow storage & large loads to contract resource adequacy risk bilaterally, or BIGPAL. Load flexes if storage runs out. No impact on the rest of the market, maximum contractual flexibility & innovation - Another one that came up A LOT: LDES. Short duration ELCC risk is driving lot of interest in long duration storage (12hr+) that would get ~100% ELCC. I was surprised to see so many developers mention LDES. Keep an eye on this one, particularly with LDES mandates also under discussion in several PJM States. 3- Storage bidding in the energy market - B/c of the market monitor’s focus on market power mitigation, batteries cannot bid their opportunity cost in PJM. They can only bid their charging cost. This is crazy and needs to change - Thankfully, PJM has recognized this and is undertaking a stakeholder process to allow short duration resources to bid their opportunity cost. Freedom & markets! 🇺🇸 4- Surplus IX Service - Can wind/solar developers use their surplus IX capacity to add batteries? A developer pointed out this is completely unusable for wind. Because the capacity injection rights are SO LOW compared to wind ELCC, adding storage has no RA value. - It’s the opposite for solar though, expect to see more movement there 5- Future outlook: A LOT of storage is coming on - 2,300 MW was approved in the RRI expedited queue - 6,400 MW already has an IX agreement across Fast Lane + TC1 queue as per great data from Modo Energy - Load growth, IX queue reforms, as well as mandates from MD, NJ, VA are going to keep pushing this - Co-location docket will also create opportunities for storage to directly site with large loads, if PJM can expand some of the configuration options