Exelon says utilities could spend up to $7 billion on 3.5 GW of regulated storage
Victoria Shinder1 min readExelon's utilities could spend $3 billion to $7 billion building 1.5 GW to 3.5 GW of regulated energy storage, company officials said on the earnings call on 30 October. That range excludes a $1 billion, 500 MW project that Atlantic City Electric has already proposed in New Jersey.
Chief executive Calvin Butler tied the plan to supply in PJM, saying the grid operator is not adding generation fast enough and that Exelon's investment in storage and transmission can help. Chief financial officer Robert Kleczynski argued for the ownership model: with regulated storage, he said, the company has certainty that projects get built and control over when and how they are deployed. He described utility-owned storage as one option alongside competitive development, not a replacement for it.
Kleczynski said customers would benefit through lower capacity prices and through the flow-through of investment tax credits, which would soften the effect of the assets on electricity rates. He noted that three states where Exelon utilities operate, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware, allow utilities to own storage to support grid resilience.
What it means
The numbers are a range, not a filing: each project still needs a state regulator to approve it into rates. The argument to watch is the one Exelon chose to make, that regulated ownership guarantees a battery gets built in a market where merchant projects are not arriving fast enough, because that is the case competitive developers will contest in each state proceeding.