Appalachian Power has issued two requests for proposals seeking up to 800 megawatts of battery energy storage systems in Virginia, while California’s Central Coast Community Energy (3CE) is simultaneously pursuing its own storage procurement — signaling that regulated utilities and community choice aggregators alike are accelerating large-scale battery deployment to meet reliability needs and clean energy mandates. The dual-state activity reflects a broader shift: storage is no longer a pilot-scale afterthought but a core procurement category for load-serving entities facing retiring thermal plants, rising peak demand, and tightening resource adequacy requirements.
Appalachian Power’s RFPs, filed with the Virginia State Corporation Commission, target both standalone storage and solar-plus-storage configurations with commercial operation dates between 2027 and 2029. The utility, a subsidiary of American Electric Power, serves roughly 540,000 customers across southwestern and central Virginia. Its move aligns with the Virginia Clean Economy Act’s requirement that the state’s two largest investor-owned utilities acquire 2,700 megawatts of energy storage by 2035. The 800-megawatt ask represents a substantial down payment on that mandate and suggests Appalachian Power is front-loading procurement to secure supply chains and interconnection queue positions ahead of a wave of similar solicitations from Dominion Energy and out-of-state developers eyeing the PJM market.
In California, 3CE’s solicitation seeks up to 200 megawatts of long-duration storage — defined as eight hours or more — alongside shorter-duration resources. The community choice aggregator serves more than 460,000 accounts across Monterey, San Benito, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Santa Cruz counties. Its emphasis on long-duration technology highlights a growing recognition among California load-serving entities that four-hour lithium-ion batteries, while dominant today, cannot alone solve the multi-day reliability challenges posed by extended winter dunkelflaute events or summer heat domes. The California Public Utilities Commission’s mid-term reliability procurement orders have already pushed utilities toward longer-duration resources; 3CE’s RFP extends that pressure to the CCA sector, which now accounts for roughly a quarter of the state’s retail load.
Both solicitations arrive as the U.S. storage market contends with equipment cost inflation, interconnection queue backlogs, and evolving federal tax credit guidance under the Inflation Reduction Act. Developers responding to these RFPs will need to demonstrate not just competitive pricing but credible execution plans — site control, interconnection studies, and supply chain commitments — that survive the scrutiny of regulators increasingly wary of project delays. For the industry, the Appalachian Power and 3CE RFPs are leading indicators: when regulated utilities in the Southeast and CCAs in California move in tandem, the addressable market for utility-scale storage has effectively gone national.
Read the full report at Energy Storage News.