According to the American Clean Power Association, Indiana made big waves in clean energy during the first quarter of this year. Indiana added the third most solar of any state and quadrupled its battery storage.
Most of Indiana's new battery storage comes from AES Indiana's new 200 megawatt facility at its Petersburg Generating Station in Pike County.
These stand-alone batteries allow utilities to buy energy off the grid when it's cheap and store it for their customers or sell it back to the grid. Because that could be any combination of wind, solar, gas and coal — it's hard to say if the energy stored is particularly green.
"It changes every day, every hour, every month, where that energy comes from," said Mallory Duncan, communications director for AES Indiana.
READ MORE: Solar on big box stores and warehouses: Indiana's big, flat, sunny opportunity
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John Hensley is the senior vice president of markets and policy analysis at ACP. He said these batteries allow something like a gas plant to operate at full power — when its most energy efficient — instead of ramping down when renewables are running.
"Everybody essentially becomes more efficient. You're maximizing the utilization of the solar and the gas or the coal facility via the battery."
And that's good for the environment too.
AES plans to convert the Petersburg coal plant to natural gas and hopes to finish another solar and battery storage project in the county next year.
Rebecca is our energy and environment reporter. Contact her at rthiele@iu.edu or follow her on Twitter at @beckythiele.
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