Energy Facilities Spotlight: Storage
Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility - Photo Courtesy of Portland General Electric
Since 1975, Oregon’s Energy Facility Siting Council has been reviewing, approving, and decommissioning state-jurisdiction energy facilities across the state – including wind, solar, natural gas, and other energy generation facilities that help keep power running in Oregon homes and businesses. As the state moves toward a clean energy future, including 100 percent clean electricity by 2040 for the state’s largest utilities, Oregon’s energy landscape will need to evolve to ensure enough clean power is available when it’s needed.
Some clean or renewable energy is variable, meaning it’s not available on demand all the time. This includes solar energy, which only generates electricity when the sun is up, or wind facilities, with generation that ramps up and down as the wind blows. Hydropower, which is also renewable, is considered a more constant or dispatchable resource, but it can also vary depending on seasonal and annual river flows.
Oregon electricity providers will need to ensure they have enough available energy 24 hours a day as the state moves to those more variable clean energy sources. One emerging solution is to pair energy storage with clean energy facilities. When the facilities generate more energy than is needed on the grid, the extra energy can be stored to later dispatch to the grid when it’s needed.
Most storage systems deployed in recent years nationwide have been lithium-ion batteries designed to completely discharge their stored energy to the grid over two to four hours – this is often referred to as short-duration energy storage. These types of battery storage systems can provide significant benefits to consumers and to grid reliability. Some grid planners and utilities have started to identify a need for storage resources that can discharge energy to the grid for longer durations (often referred to as long-duration energy storage).
Want to learn more about storage technology?
At the May 2025 Energy Facility Siting Council meeting, ODOE Rules Coordinator Tom Jackman presented on the different types of battery storage systems. Read the staff report and tune in to watch his presentation.
While Oregon’s Energy Facility Siting Council doesn’t have jurisdiction over storage specifically, the Council has seen an influx in facilities adding and considering storage alongside new or amended renewable energy facilities going through the state siting process.
The Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facility III (owned by NextEra in Morrow County) was the first state jurisdiction renewable energy facility to add battery storage in Oregon. The facility became operational in 2022, generates up to 50 megawatts of solar energy, and can store 50 megawatts of energy in onsite batteries.
As of July 2025, Oregon has 56 megawatts of battery storage operating at state jurisdiction facilities, another 2.4 gigawatts of storage at approved facilities that have not yet been built, and another 4.7 gigawatts of storage at facilities currently under review.
Not all energy storage comes in the form of batteries. Pumped-storage hydropower uses low-cost electricity to pump water to a reservoir at elevation and then leverages gravity to let the water flow down through turbines into a lower reservoir to generate electricity with need is high. Similarly, mechanical gravity storage uses cables or other mechanical systems to elevate large masses and then let them descend later to generate electricity. While not EFSC-jurisdiction, ODOE’s team does track several storage facilities, like pumped-storage, that are being reviewed at the federal level.
Battery storage and other storage technologies are expected to continue improving and innovating in the future to support the clean energy transition and turn variable resources into more constant energy options.
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