‘Huge step forward’: Illinois inches closer on battery storage, solar
goals
[September 15, 2026]
By Maggie Dougherty
CHICAGO — For Illinois to meet its ambitious decarbonization goals, the
state’s energy grid will need more battery storage to make use of solar
and wind power when the sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow.
State regulators took the first major step last month toward bringing
new energy storage online, a key component of legislation that took
effect in June.
The results of the first battery power procurement auction mean another
600 megawatts of new utility-scale energy storage projects will come
online in Illinois by 2030 — roughly enough to power half a million
homes, or the equivalent of what a single coal or natural gas plant
generates.
That’s over four times the 141 megawatts of utility-scale battery
storage currently installed in the state, according to the Solar Energy
Industries Association.
But it’s just over half of what regulators sought to procure coming into
the process.
Despite that, renewable energy advocates are celebrating the progress,
with more procurements to follow as the state looks to secure a minimum
of 3,000 megawatts by the end of 2030.
“The technology is already here and being developed as we speak,” said
Brett Sproul, Illinois policy advocacy lead at Advanced Energy United, a
national industry association representing renewable energy and storage
providers.
“Despite not hitting the initial procurement target, the 600 megawatts
of storage, regardless, in and of itself, is a huge step forward for
Illinois, and definitely a really great success for affordability and
reliability in the state,” he added.
Regional discrepancies
The summer procurement event was the first to come after Gov. JB
Pritzker signed the Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act, or CRGA,
into law earlier this year. It was conducted by the Illinois Power
Agency, an independent agency created by lawmakers to manage energy
procurement plans for the state.
The event targeted 1,038 MW of energy storage projects — 450 MW for the
Midcontinent Independent System Operator, or MISO, territory in central
and southern Illinois, and 588 MW for PJM Interconnection in the
northern Illinois ComEd territory.
The results exceeded the goal for MISO, securing 520 MW total from four
projects. PJM came in below target, with 80 MW secured through one
project.
Despite the PJM shortfall, experts familiar with the results say they
should not be read as a failure — or as indicating major inherent
differences between the two territories.
Industry experts said they believed the IPA wanted to get the new
procurement process right before eventually broadening the scope. The
agency was required to conduct the initial procurement within rigid
rules as dictated by statute, but it will have more flexibility under
future procurements in 2027 and 2028 and will seek stakeholder feedback
this fall to improve the process.
James Gignac, Midwest policy director at the Union of Concerned
Scientists, said the strict parameters in the initial round created
challenges for developers in the PJM territory.
PJM has long struggled to connect new power generation to its grid,
resulting in long delays for new energy projects to come online. Those
projects can only stay in the queue for so long before requests time
out, and the timing of the procurement event coincided with several
major projects in the PJM queue expiring, according to industry
insiders.
“My sense is that we just had a mismatch between the commercial
operation date this procurement was seeking, and the status of project
development in the PJM queue,” Gignac said.
Those developers can reapply in future cycles, at which time the
financial incentives contained within CRGA will be in full effect.
[to top of second column]
|
An industrial-scale battery storage facility at G&W Electric in
Bolingbrook, which was installed in 2024. (Capitol News Illinois
file photo)
Andrew Linhares, director of Midwest state affairs for the Solar Energy
Industries Association, or SEIA, said the second procurement will be
more revealing.
“Those will be the projects that are reacting to the passage of this
landmark law, and that’ll really tell us the breadth and the number of
interested developers and the appetite for these projects,” Linhares
said.
Looking forward
Linhares said another factor will also likely lead to greater interest:
The first procurement accepted only standalone storage projects; the
next will allow projects that pair storage with solar or wind projects.
“I think that the paired solar and storage market is really aggressive
and optimistic for the future for Illinois,” he said.
A recent report from SEIA and data analytics firm Wood Mackenzie
identified combined solar and storage as the fastest emerging source of
energy in the U.S., accounting for 70% of all new capacity added to the
grid in the first half of 2026.
That power, the report estimates, is enough to operate over 50 million
homes, more than one-third of all U.S. households.
An integrated resource planning process, also established under CRGA, is
set to kick off with an initial plan submitted by the IPA and other
regulatory agencies this November.
That will give regulators the opportunity to assess the progress of
energy storage programs and determine if additional procurements will be
needed.
Residential scale
Residential solar projects are also on the rise in the state, with new
consumer-facing projects designed to lower energy bills and add capacity
to the grid.
For example, rooftop solar and battery company SOLRITE Energy entered
the Illinois market last month, made possible by the state’s “virtual
power plant” program that was included in CRGA.
That program allows homes and businesses with solar panels or wind
turbines to pool energy, acting “virtually” like a power plant despite
not physically existing as one.
The company installs its solar panels and home batteries for ComEd and
Ameren customers at no up-front cost. Households pay monthly bills at a
fixed rate and the energy from SOLRITE’s network can be dispatched back
to the grid during periods of high demand.
SOLRITE’s goal is to install 500-1,000 paired solar-storage systems in
Illinois by the end of the year and a minimum of 5,000 in 2027,
according to its CEO Regan George.
Renewable energy advocates say these types of residential programs,
along with the IPA’s utility-scale procurements, are exactly what was
envisioned when lawmakers passed CRGA.
“It’s exciting to see real life projects and programs being implemented
as a result of the legislature’s leadership,” Union of Concerned
Scientists director Gignac said. “Implementation is not an easy process,
but there’s a lot of good people working on it.”
Capitol News Illinois
is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state
government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded
primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick
Foundation. |
