Utility Dive intl_tech D1

发布：2026-06-09 · 事件：2026-06-09

An article from Not-for-profit utilities turn to energy storage as data centers drive cost, reliability concerns Reliability, power price hedging and avoided infrastructure investment are among the to...

An article from Not-for-profit utilities turn to energy storage as data centers drive cost, reliability concerns Reliability, power price hedging and avoided infrastructure investment are among the top reasons for the battery push, NRECA said. Published June 9, 2026 By Brian Martucci Share Copy link Email LinkedIn X/Twitter Facebook Print License Add us on Google Last summer, rural electric cooperatives had 439 MW/1,047 MWh of operating battery energy storage projects, according to the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Getty Images Listen to the article 11 min This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback . Meeker Energy, a member-owned electric cooperative serving about 10,000 homes and businesses in central Minnesota, is typical of many non-profit utilities across the country. While investor-owned giants tout the profit potential of large-load pipelines in the gigawatts, distribution coops like Meeker are watching the wholesale cost of electricity rise, with little they can do to mitigate it except controlling for their own consumption. That expense accounts for the largest part of members’ bills. That’s where storage comes in. The utility is in the early stages of testing behind-the-meter residential batteries at members’ homes for resilience and demand response. Steve Kosbab, Meeker’s energy services manager, said 60% of its members participate in at least one of its load management programs, which already helps Meeker reduce wholesale power demand charges. “We’re at a level of demand response where we can only shed so much … so we’re looking at how we can enhance demand response programs that are very mature and very successful,” Kosbab told Utility Dive. Kosbab said Meeker considered incentives for its rural and exurban customer base to add standby generators that run on propane or natural gas, but “a person could get upside down on the fuel costs versus the electric savings” with such equipment. Partial- and whole-home batteries seemed to make more economic sense, he said. Storage is on the rise across the power sector and on both sides of the meter. As the technology evolves, prices have fallen and capacity has gone up. At the same time, generator retirements and rising demand have caused the grid’s reliability watchdog to warn of potential electricity shortfalls , leading everyone – from residents to hyperscalers to utilities – to invest in storage as a backup in case of a blackout or curtailment, as well as a hedge against price spikes. Last summer, rural electric cooperatives had 439 MW/1,047 MWh of operating battery energy storage projects, according to the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. Those numbers do not necessarily include every behind-the-meter battery in cooperatives’ service territories. They also represent a tiny fraction of the 28 GW/57 GWh of energy storage that Benchmark Mineral Intelligence says connected to the U.S. grid in 2025. But a lot more could come online soon: NRECA is tracking dozens of smaller-scale projects in development that it says could more than triple rural cooperatives’ energy storage capacity by 2028. Many of the projects pursued by non-profit utilities will connect to the distribution networks they manage. And a significant amount of the planned capacity will be behind individual members’ electric meters. Guadalupe Valley Electric Cooperative, which serves a rural-to-suburban region east of San Antonio, said last month it would expand a pilot with Base Power that installs heavily discounted residential batteries . It expects the program to grow from 2 MW to 50 MW over the next few years. In the Electric Reliability Council of Texas territory, the distributed approach is more cost-effective than deploying grid-scale storage, general manager Darren Schauer told Utility Dive . NRECA says initiatives like these will help shave costly demand peaks, firm intermittent generation, boost resilience and defer infrastructure upgrades. Some energy storage projects will hook up to transmission grids managed by regional cooperatives. Beth Soholt, executive director of the Clean Grid Alliance, which focuses on the Midcontinent Independent System Operator region where Meeker is located, said cooperatives are eager to adopt new technologies when it’s in their members’ interest, and may not need the “carrots and sticks” state policymakers and regulators use to push investor-owned utilities to innovate. “Cooperatives really can be innovative,” Soholt told Utility Dive in an interview. “I’ve been impressed over the years how they’re able to pick up on new things and just do them.” Peak shaving and profit models In addition to deploying batteries with colocated renewables and encouraging members to use their own energy storage, some cooperatives are also leaning into storage on the distribution system for reliability and economic reasons. Earlier this year, Blue Ridge Power Agency, a Virginia power wholesaler for municipal and