Energy Storage Permitting Guidebook - Report - Page 10
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Energy Storage Guidebook
invests in scientific and technological research to accelerate the transformation of the electricity sector to
meet the state’s energy and climate goals. EPIC-funded projects are designed to serve California ratepayers
by improving reliability, lowering costs, and increasing safety. The guidebook intends to highlight best
practices currently implemented across the state that local governments and industry can learn from to
create fast, efficient, and safe processes to permit the installation of BTM energy storage systems in their
own jurisdictions.
This project benefits California ratepayers by providing resources and insights to help AHJs and those
who design and install energy storage systems make energy storage permitting easier, faster, and cheaper
without sacrificing safety or quality of installation. In turn, safe and simple energy storage system permitting
practices will:
Accelerate the deployment of energy storage statewide.
Reduce peak power demand on the grid.
Ensure reliable service for end users on the customer side even in the face of extreme weather events,
public safety power shutoffs, and unplanned outages.
The information provided in this guidebook is intended to help California better integrate BTM energy
storage systems into the electric grid—ultimately increasing the volume of renewable energy resources
deployed, lowering costs for ratepayers, and helping the state achieve carbon neutrality in the coming
decades.
Scope
The Public Utilities Code § 2835 defines an energy storage system as a commercially
available technology capable of absorbing energy, storing it for a specified period of
time, and then dispatching the energy thereafter. The stored electrical energy can be
supplied at the energy storage system’s installed location when desired or supplied
back to the electric grid distribution network.
Using this definition means that thermal energy storage systems are not included since, in the capacities that
are in scope, they store energy but do not provide electricity back to local circuits or the grid. This guidebook
focuses on commercially available BTM energy storage systems of less than 1 MW of net generation capacity.
According to the CEC’s California Energy Storage System Survey, 99.88% of the nearly 253,000 systems
included in the dataset are sized less than 1 MW. This guidebook addresses the permitting process for
commercially available BTM electrochemical battery-based energy storage systems (BESS).
