Years ago, Bill Gates wrote about the importance of entrepreneurship and innovation in the storage space. Reflecting on his own investments in battery technology, he noted that storing energy was “surprisingly hard and expensive.”
Since then, the energy storage landscape has changed dramatically. While battery energy storage projects remain technically complex and capital intensive, battery energy storage systems (BESS) have scaled rapidly, costs have declined significantly, and storage has become central to how modern power markets operate.
Across global and U.S. power systems, battery storage is now recognized as a core tool for reliability, flexibility, and decarbonization. Storage is being integrated into utility planning, renewable energy portfolios, and corporate energy strategies, reshaping how projects are financed, developed, and regulated.
Why Battery Energy Storage Systems Matter
Battery energy storage systems are increasingly indispensable to the modern grid. Across North America and globally, storage is being deployed at multiple sizes and scales, including:
- Utility-scale and grid-scale battery storage that supports capacity needs, frequency regulation, and multihour renewable integration.
- Co-located and hybrid renewable-plus-storage projects that optimize solar and wind output, provide firm capacity, and capture value from energy and capacity markets.
- Behind-the-meter and distributed energy storage that enables peak shaving, resilience, microgrids, and advanced demand-side management for commercial, industrial, and residential customers.
- Emerging long-duration and alternative storage technologies that complement lithium-ion for longer-duration applications, reliability needs, and system balancing.
As battery storage continues to move from pilot to mainstream, developers, investors, lenders, and utilities are confronting complex legal, regulatory, and commercial questions — from interconnection and permitting to market design, tax incentives, and contracting structures.
About the Troutman Pepper Locke Battery + Storage Podcast
The Troutman Pepper Locke Battery + Storage podcast provides listeners with timely, practical insight into this fast-changing sector. Hosted by attorneys and other professionals who work every day in power, renewables, and energy infrastructure, the podcast features perspectives from industry veterans at the center of battery and storage project development.
Our conversations explore how battery energy storage systems are:
- Transforming power system planning, resource adequacy, and grid reliability.
- Changing assumptions about power market economics, including congestion, arbitrage, and ancillary services.
- Enabling renewable energy integration and supporting decarbonization pathways for utilities and large energy users.
- Influencing project finance, M&A, and tax equity in the energy storage and renewable project ecosystem.
Far from Gates’ original observation that energy storage is “surprisingly hard and expensive,” our guests describe a market where storage is increasingly cost-effective, scalable, and central to grid planning — while still presenting intricate technical, regulatory, and commercial challenges that require careful navigation.
Who You’ll Hear From
Our podcast guests span the full battery and storage value chain, including:
- Electric industry leaders — utilities, independent power producers (IPPs), and grid operators working on utility-scale and distributed storage projects.
- Developers and investors — project sponsors, financiers, and tax equity providers structuring standalone storage and hybrid renewable-plus-storage deals.
- Public sector and regulators — federal and state policymakers, RTO/ISO representatives, and state commission staff focused on storage policy and market rules.
- Nonprofit organizations (NGOs) and market analysts — organizations and commentators tracking the intersection of storage, climate policy, and grid modernization.
Each episode focuses on a common theme: how battery and storage technologies are driving a fundamental shift in power sector operations, investment, and risk allocation.
What Listeners Will Gain
The Troutman Pepper Locke Battery + Storage podcast is designed for stakeholders who need current, practical insight into battery and storage issues, including developers, utilities, lenders, investors, corporate energy buyers, and policymakers. Listeners can expect:
- Real-time perspectives on policy and regulatory developments affecting BESS and hybrid projects.
- Deep dives into project structuring for standalone storage and renewable-plus-storage, including PPAs, tolling arrangements, capacity contracts, and revenue stacking.
- Discussion of technology trends — from lithium-ion (including lithium iron phosphate) to emerging long-duration storage — and what these trends mean for project risk and value.
- Case studies and lessons learned from recent transactions, RFPs, and operational projects across North America and key global markets.
Our goal is to give listeners a view of the energy storage transformation from the inside out — helping them identify opportunities, understand evolving risks, and stay ahead in a rapidly shifting market.
The firm’s historic representation of electric industry clients, its project development and renewable energy expertise, has provided us with a springboard to understanding storage industry economic and technological precursors. We thus have experience working with early-adopter storage technology companies as the industry evolved. This early work has proven to be crucial to more recent representations as both grid-scale storage and distributed storage become more commonplace.
As early as 1999, the firm represented an affiliate generation technology company with regulatory and structuring issues associated with distributed generation (DG) facilities at the San Diego Naval Yard. This project entailed an early version of a microgrid adopted on the very same site in 2018.
The firm represented competitive suppliers in California’s first Wholesale Distribution Access Tariff (WDAT) proceeding the tariff that ultimately gave rise to the proliferation of DERs, including storage. Later, in 2010, the firm supported development of Ice Energy’s behind-the-meter Ice Bear storage system. Today the company is one of the most successful storage businesses in the U.S.
In 2014, the firm provided cutting-edge tax advice to a utility client regarding availability of the ITC credit for a solar facility that also would include a storage system.
As battery technology and demand-side management began to accelerate, the firm worked with transmission-only clients to examine whether this new technology could provide support as a non-generation resource, i.e., for vars, or for black-start, or as a substitute for capacitor banks. The firm counseled ATC LLC, a transmission-only company, regarding operation, ownership and investment in battery storage assets.
Beginning in 2015, the firm counseled and represented an early-mover in the grid-scale battery storage space. This Midwest integrated utility installed a 20 MW (flexible 40 MW) lithium-ion battery storage array in a major urban load center. The representation tackled issues of first impression regarding the use of MISO’s Generator Interconnection Agreement (GIA) (see 155 FERC ¶ 61,211 (2016). Later, when FERC took up these issues on a generic basis, the firm assisted clients in preparing comments on FERC Order No. 842, its Final Rule on amendments to the pro forma GIA and the provision of Primary Frequency Response. FERC’s Final Rule required specific accommodations for electric storage resources. (see 162 FERC ¶ 61,128 P 176 et seq. (2018).
The firm also represented this utility on a landmark complaint before FERC regarding the participation of storage resources within the MISO markets. While FERC directed changes to MISO’s market rules to accommodate the participation of storage resources in MISO’s markets (158 FERC ¶ 61,107 (2017) based on specific findings with respect to the MISO tariff and market rules, this complaint also laid the groundwork for FERC’s Order No. 841, the Final Rule on Electric Storage Participation in Markets Operated by Regional Transmission Organizations and Independent System Operators, 162 FERC ¶ 61,127 (2018). Through this representation, the firm gained significant experience and expertise in the intersection of business, market, engineering and regulatory issues associated with grid-scale battery resources.
The combination of experience garnered through the representation of the transmission-only entities and an integrated utility has allowed the firm’s energy practice to gain a unique perspective on the role grid-scale batteries can play with respect to the provision of ancillary services, energy, capacity and transmission services, and how those services can all play a role in the value stack.
As battery storage began to gain market penetration as a component of distribution networks, Troutman Sanders attorneys also represented solar-plus-storage developers and electric vehicle manufacturers in various state proceedings that developed storage incentives and mandates.
In 2019, our attorneys counseled clients navigating the flurry of state-level activity, including the initiatives surrounding New York’s implementation of its sweeping Reforming the Energy Vision (REV), Massachusetts’ rollout of the Solar Massachusetts Renewable Target (SMART), and the District of Columbia’s interest in utilizing microgrids with storage assets as a resiliency grid measure.
Our attorneys have played an integral part in advising clients on the legal frameworks that could enable new grid structures, including ownership and customer energy delivery models. The firm represents WGL Energy Services, Inc./WGL Energy Systems, Inc., regarding a proposed microgrid and real estate development at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
In the NY REV context, our attorneys represent energy storage developers seeking to fulfill Con Edison’s large-scale storage mandate and the related developer operational regulatory requirements to participate as a capacity resource within the New York Independent System Operator.
In 2025, the Battery + Storage Podcast was selected by MillionPodcasts as one of the Top 20 Battery Podcasts on the web.
