CALIFORNIA, July 26, 2017 - The California State Assembly has dropped a bill cleared by the Senate that would have supplied rebates for long-term energy storage systems. In an interview with Green Tech Media, Laura Gray, energy storage policy adviser for the California Solar Energy Industries Association, said it was a “calculated move” backed by major utilities. “They see distributed storage as an even bigger threat than standalone solar,” Gray said. Chris Holden, chairman of the Assembly’s Utilities and Energy Committee, said that Gray is oversimplifying. “To suggest that the perspectives of the utilities affected the treatment of this bill is a simplistic statement," he said. “It avoids the substance of the issues surrounding further development of storage in California, which is a leader around the world in the work we have done thus far.” Legislators say they plan to pick up the bill again in the 2018 legislative session.
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