According to Energy Storage Network, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced California's 2022-2023 budget this week, which includes $380 million in financial support for long-term energy storage projects, which will stimulate the rapid development and growth of up to 20 long-term energy storage projects. This $380 million long-term energy storage fund is part of the $2 billion clean energy investment plan, which also provides funding for green hydrogen, building decarbonization, pumped storage power stations, and other technologies.



Despite the significant controversy surrounding the green energy industry in California and doubts about the future of rooftop solar power grid connection, the support of the fiscal budget for energy storage has been welcomed by members of the California Long Term Energy Storage Association.



Julia Prochnik, the executive director of the association, said in a statement to the media, "Over the next two years, a $380 million fiscal allocation will be used to carry out long-term energy storage projects across the state to support the reliability and resilience of the power grid. This will stimulate the development of various energy storage technologies to meet the growing demand and scale of providing hours and days of energy storage for the power grid."





The huge demand for long-term energy storage



The carbon neutrality goal set by California is to generate 60% of electricity from renewable sources by 2045 and completely eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the power system.



A study released by Strategen Consulting in collaboration with the California Energy Storage Alliance (CESA) at the end of 2020 predicts that the state will need to deploy 2GW to 11GW of long-term energy storage by 2030. By 2045, this demand may increase to 45GW to 55GW.



California is already a leading state in the United States in large-scale solar power generation and electrochemical energy storage. According to a recent blog post by CESA Executive Director Alex Morris, the total installed capacity of electrochemical energy storage has increased from 500 megawatts in 2020 to over 3000 megawatts by the end of 2021.



Although electrochemical energy storage - currently mainly 2-4 hours of lithium-ion batteries - has helped grid operator CAISO avoid the power shortage predicted last summer, the higher the share of renewable energy in the state, the greater the demand for long-term energy storage.



The $380 million funding used to support long-term energy storage should be seen as a stimulus policy, and the government hopes to use these public funds to quickly launch more projects, which can then receive a continuous stream of social funding investment. It is expected that 10-20 long-term energy storage projects will benefit from it and develop rapidly in the next two to three years.





ZH Energy Storage Company will hold a course on long-term energy storage market and technology analysis in the near future. Interested parties can add the company's official WeChat account to learn more.






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Author and Company Profile:

Dr. Xie Wei, co-founder and chief scientist of ZH Energy Storage, holds a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Materials from Tsinghua University, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. He has served as a Senior R&D Engineer at United Technologies and Chief R&D Scientist at Form Energy, a startup in Boston. With over ten years of experience in liquid flow battery product development, he was responsible for the all vanadium liquid flow battery project, which won the 2013 US 100 R&D Award.



Relying on the industry experience and outstanding research and development capabilities accumulated by its founder Dr. Xie Wei in the energy storage field, ZH Energy Storage Company will launch mature liquid flow battery products to meet the market demand for large-scale long-term energy storage (discharge time greater than 4 hours) and achieve economic applicability. The company's long-term goal is to build a world leading liquid flow battery technology platform, communicate upstream and downstream industrial chains, reduce the cost of liquid flow battery systems through large-scale production, and become a leading enterprise in the field of long-term energy storage.