On Thursday, the House Energy and Utilities Committee began discussions on House Resolution 6011. It requests the Kansas Corporation Commission to convene a group of stakeholders to study energy storage as a cost-effective was to stabilize renewable energy generation, address transmission congestion costs, increase system reliability, increase the potential for distributive generation, and other energy storage issues the Commission identifies.
The main form of storage discussed was compressed-air energy storage, which is the most cost-effective form of electricity storage. CAES is basically a way to store energy made by wind turbines by compressing it and storing it underground, and then using it as needed. There are some startup costs to running CAES, but because it is extremely efficient, it absorbs those costs quickly. Kansas has many underground resources for CAES, which can be a valuable resource for Kansas, but CAES must be positioned to serve and get paid by more than one client, a problem which House Resolution 6011 helps to address.