The Solar Energy Industries Association has announced a new venture in the burgeoning energy storage industry, and it is extending a board seat and 10 free memberships to companies in the sector.

The Storage Advocacy Network will be a formal branch of SEIA and will lobby for the energy storage industry at the federal and state levels, the association announced Wednesday.

"Solar and storage are inextricably linked, and SEIA is increasingly working at the intersection of these market-moving technologies," SEIA CEO Abigail Ross Hopper said in a statement. "Over the next decade, we need to dramatically ramp up ... storage installations to achieve emissions goals, and we'll need world-class federal and state advocacy to help us get there."

"There is a massive gap between our energy storage goals and where we are now, and business as usual is not a recipe for success," Hopper continued. "SEIA is the voice of open market competition in the electricity sector, and we have a unique role in ensuring energy storage is deployed rapidly at low cost for America's energy future."



According to a Wood Mackenzie study cited by SEIA, the U.S. energy storage market is on pace to quintuple from 1.5 gigawatts in 2020 to 7.8 gigawatts in 2025.

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