‘Huge step forward’: Illinois inches closer on battery storage, solar goals

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.

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 may 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.