On June 12th, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul announced that the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency (NYSERDA) will provide $5 million in funding for Long Term Energy Storage (LDES) projects through competitive bidding. The funding will be provided by the New York State Renewable Energy Optimization and Storage Innovation Program to support the development and demonstration of scalable LDES solutions to help the state achieve its clean energy and energy storage deployment goals, including achieving 6GW of energy storage by 2030.
Hochul's office stated that this competitive bidding will support innovative and underutilized LDES solutions, equipment, software, controls, and other complementary technologies that have not yet been commercialized by funding demonstration projects. Eligible projects must submit proposals before 3pm local time on September 24, 2024.

The duration of eligible projects at rated power needs to be between 10 and 100 hours. The announcement states that "electrical, chemical, mechanical, and thermoelectric long-term energy storage solution technologies should be promoted and tested on-site to address cost, performance, and renewable energy integration challenges, such as grid congestion, capacity limitations, and New York City lithium-ion battery site selection restrictions." In densely populated urban areas like New York City, site selection restrictions for lithium-ion batteries may include fire safety issues, noise emissions, and logistics challenges.

Previously, LDES had raised $15 million in funding in 2023, most of which would be used for Form Energy's iron air battery project, and raised $16.6 million for five projects in 2022.

"Investing in long-term energy storage solutions can help replace peak fossil fuel power plants while incentivizing clean energy development, effectively improving air quality and mitigating the impact of climate change on the future of traditionally burdensome communities," said Dorian Harris, President and CEO of the New York State Energy Research and Development Bureau

The New York State Energy Research and Development Agency's Innovation Program is funded by the New York State's 10-year, $6 billion Clean Energy Fund

In the context of global energy transformation and addressing climate change, the development of long-term energy storage has become an inevitable trend. In urban areas like New York State, where population and assets are dense, scenarios are complex, and fire safety is difficult to implement, energy storage system construction must not only consider the advantages of long-term energy storage, but also fire safety issues. Based on the construction of energy storage systems in high safety demand places, ZH Energy Storage has recently launched a high safety level energy storage solution. On June 19-21, Dr. Xie Wei, the chief scientist of ZH Energy Storage, will share with you at the Munich Battery Energy Storage Exhibition in Germany: "Flow Battery," translated to English, ESS for Applications with High Safety Needs”。