Welcome to Grid Brief! Here’s what we’re looking at today: New York ISO voices reliability concerns, groups partner to accelerate zinc batteries, Texas hits solar record.

New York ISO Voices Grid Reliability Concerns

New York’s grid may see increased blackouts and outages in the coming decade as firm power plants are closed and the pace of renewable buildout lags.

Analysis from New York ISO estimates expects a “statewide resource deficiency of at least 1,000 MW by 2034” driven “by increasing demand, large loads, and assumed gas unavailability.” New York City in particular will be impacted by small gas power plant retirements and is expected to have a resource deficiency of 245 MW by 2034.

If the finding is finalized, it will set off a process to address this resource deficiency, according to E&E News.

Public-Private Partnership Aims to Accelerate Zinc Battery Adoption

The Zinc Battery Initiative (ZBI), the Department of Energy (DOE), and West Virginia University (WVU) are collaborating to advance the nascent battery technology. Earlier this year, the consortium held a workshop at WVU to discuss barriers to the widespread adoption of zinc batteries.

Zinc batteries have higher upfront costs which has hurt their development. One solution brought forth by DOE to address this concern is for a national lab to “build either a shared pilot line or a full-size production line dedicated to the testing of zinc batteries.”

ZBI members, meanwhile agreed to raise awareness of the benefits of zinc batteries and work together to develop standards to bolster their deployment.

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Conversation Starters

• Texas solar generation hits record (X)

  For the first time, solar generation broke 20,000 MW in Texas.

• Utility commissioners signal support for Order 1920 (Utility Dive)

  33 utility Commissioners from 14 states recently submitted a letter in support of FERC Order 1920, stating that the ruling will lower energy costs. This comes after utility commissioners from Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas asked an appellate court to reverse FERC’s ruling.

• DOE awards Penn State $1.1 million for geologic hydrogen (Penn State)

  The Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) awarded a $1.1 million grant to a Penn State research team to explore and potentially extract geological hydrogen from its subsurface reservoirs.

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