This summer, Rhode Island passed the 2024 Energy Storage Systems Act and joined the many Northeast states making storage a key part of their energy transition strategy. Solar Power World spoke with United's Kat Burnham about the legislation and the growing momentum behind New England's energy storage advocacy.

This summer, Rhode Island joined its New England neighbors in passing legislation specifically aimed at energy storage development. The state has an aggressive clean energy target of 100% renewable electricity by 2033, and the Energy Storage Systems Act will contribute to that endeavor.

As most areas of the country are still working on positive solar legislation, New England’s energy storage efforts seem almost futuristic. Rhode Island’s latest legislation establishes storage programs, deployment targets, utility storage procurements and rules for connecting batteries to the grid. Solar Power World spoke with Kat Burnham, senior principal at the national business association Advanced Energy United, about how energy storage advocacy efforts have developed recently.

SPW: What is Advanced Energy United, and what advocacy efforts are you working on, especially in New England?

Burnham: Advanced Energy United is a national trade association of clean energy companies, united in our mission to achieve 100% clean energy. What makes us stand out is we are not a single sector — we represent batteries, wind, solar, grid enhancing technologies. While we’re national, we have state representatives across the country. I’m the state lead for Rhode Island, as well as Massachusetts and Connecticut.

There’s a lot going on in New England, and we as an organization are relatively new to this space. I’ve worked in Rhode Island advocacy for a few years, and our New England team has a track record of work in the area. Our [energy] work in New England covers legislative issues like the energy storage bill in Rhode Island. We also do some regulatory work at Public Utilities Commissions, and our team does work with ISO New England, advocating for reforms at the wholesale level. We really cover our bases. We even have a federal team keeping an eye on how federal dollars from the DOE are investing in the New England states and how they can be leveraged for our shared energy goals.

What were your goals with the Energy Storage Systems Act in Rhode Island?

Our goal was to have legislation that would enable storage in Rhode Island. To put it simply, right now, the market is not well-designed to incentivize storage development. It was designed at a time when we had big, centralized power sources, and storage is really unique. Our goal was for that legislation to encourage investment in storage solutions in Rhode Island and have a forward-looking view, including deployment targets for Rhode Island to offer some predictability to the market and help grow interest in the state.

Looking around Rhode Island, we see our neighbors Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine all have viable storage targets. To keep pace, we absolutely want to have our own deployment targets. It definitely helps having other states take the first step, and we can learn best practices or lessons learned from those states, which is reassuring to policymakers. Just like solar has evolved, storage has finally hit its moment. We’re seeing both the cost savings and the abilities with storage in a way that we hadn’t in previous years. That’s helped make the case for storage and made it a positive success story.