Renewable Energy World: New Illinois Clean Energy Bills Mandate State’s First Storage Procurement, A VPP Program, and More

Two bills working their way through the Illinois General Assembly promise to help the state meet its climate goals while future-proofing its grid, implementing clean energy technology to increase reliability, and decrease consumer costs.

HB5856 and SB3959 establish the state’s first energy storage mandate and tackle challenges slowing down the development and interconnection of renewable energy projects.

“HB5856 and SB3959 will provide many benefits to Illinois for decades to come, from lowering consumer costs to ushering in thousands of jobs to preventing dangerous blackouts to bolstering our power grid to make Illinois an attractive investment for energy-intensive tech companies,” explained State Representative Barbara Hernandez (D-Aurora), lead sponsor of HB5856.

Among other things, the bills aim to:

• Establish an 8.5 GW utility-scale cumulative storage procurement target for the Illinois Power Agency, which will help support the grid during peak electricity usage and encourage utility-scale solar development.
• Implement a more efficient interconnection process by increasing transparency and predictability to reduce surprises and empower increased storage development at all sizes and technologies, from behind-the-meter to utility-scale.
• Create incentive and savings programs for customers to adopt technology that reduces peak loads, behind-meter storage that reduces peak loads or exports, and combined community solar + storage developments.
• Uncap the residential Illinois Shines Block to eliminate waiting lists and enable more households to install solar.
• Modernize IPA procurement processes to ensure efficient procurement of clean energy while also keeping Illinois on track to achieve Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA) goals.
• Establish a robust Virtual Power Plant (VPP) program tapping into home solar and storage resources.

“HB5856 and SB3959 are critical to building on the success of the landmark Climate and Equitable Jobs Act (CEJA) in Illinois,” said Andrew Linhares, senior manager of state affairs, Central region for SEIA. “This thoughtfully crafted legislation will help unleash the full potential of solar and storage and help Illinois achieve 100% clean energy by 2050.” 

A recent study by Mark Pruitt, former director of the Illinois Power Agency, founder of The Power Bureau, and a professor at Northwestern University, found that meeting the bills’ energy storage procurement target would provide $3 billion in consumer cost savings, save $7.3 billion in blackout-related costs through increased grid reliability, and generate up to $16.3 billion in economic activity in Illinois by 2050. Illinois consumers would save about $30 per month on their energy bills. The study also found that better energy storage is the most cost-effective, immediate, and attainable long-term solution, an assertion many clean energy advocates agree with.

“Energy storage will improve the reliability of the Illinois electric grid, and this legislation can’t come at a more important moment,” said Trish Demeter, managing director of Advanced Energy United. “The sooner we can begin adding more energy storage, the sooner we can address energy capacity shortfalls due to the ever-growing energy demand from residents and businesses, retiring power stations, and continued investments from energy-intensive industries, while providing savings to consumers and supercharging the Illinois economy.” 

The PJM Interconnection’s last energy capacity auction in July saw an 833% increase in energy prices, due to an anticipated energy capacity shortfall, which will increase power bills by as much as $30 per month for millions of Illinois residents within PJM territory. HB5856/SB3959 will directly address this risk by providing incentives for more wind, solar, and storage developments in pursuit of a more diverse, reliable power grid.