Earlier this month, I attended both the 2026 CAISO Stakeholder Symposium and the CESA Market Development Forum, back-to-back California energy events that offer a comprehensive view of where the state's grid and energy storage market are headed.
CAISO Stakeholder Symposium
The 2026 CAISO Stakeholder Symposium convened October 5-6, bringing together clients, industry peers, ISO leadership, and stakeholders from across the Western grid for two days of dialogue covering the rapidly-evolving California power system.
This year's discussions coalesced around four central themes:
- Market Design, particularly the Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM)
- Collaboration Across Stakeholders and Entities
- Grid Innovation
- The Future of the Power System
Takeaway #1: Why EDAM is Being Called a Partnership Success Story
CAISO devoted significant time to reflecting on the path to EDAM's current standing. The collaborative work among numerous stakeholders and entities has been foundational to EDAM's rollout, and without that cross-organizational cooperation, the market expansion would not have achieved the success it has.
Portland General Electric's representative offered a refreshingly understated assessment of the rollout: it "has been a boring roll-out."
In an industry where "boring" is often the highest praise, the comment underscored the absence of major hiccups or emergency interventions. It is a signal that the extensive coordination behind EDAM is paying off operationally.
Takeaway #2: How AI Is Reshaping Grid Innovation
AI is increasingly viewed as a vehicle to automate and accelerate processes that are currently bottlenecking interconnection timelines. Beyond process automation, panelists explored AI's expanding role in grid decision-making as a tool to support and improve real-time system operations. Grid innovation discussions extended beyond AI as well, with dynamic line rating and advanced conductors highlighted among the broader portfolio of technologies poised to enhance grid capacity and flexibility.
Takeaway #3: What's Next for Transmission, Demand Response, and Renewables?
The symposium closed with a forward-looking lens, addressing transmission expansion, demand response, and continued integration of renewable resources. These priorities are positioned as the connective tissue supporting California's decarbonization goals while preserving a safe and reliable transmission grid.
California's grid transformation is as much a story of collaboration and governance as it is one of technology. For stakeholders navigating EDAM participation, interconnection queues, or emerging AI-driven grid operations, staying engaged with CAISO's evolving stakeholder processes will be critical to capturing the opportunities ahead.
CESA Market Development Forum (MDF)
The 2026 CESA Market Development Forum (MDF) took place October 7–8, 2026, in Sacramento, CA. The conference brought together representatives from California ISO (CAISO), California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), California Energy Commission (CEC), utilities, CCAs, developers, among others to discuss the future of energy storage in California.
This year's CESA MDF focused on several broad categories:
- Energy Storage Revenue Challenges
- Resource Adequacy and Extended Day-Ahead Market (EDAM)
- Long-Duration Energy Storage
- AI and Data Center Load Growth
- Market Design Enhancements
- BESS Safety and Community Acceptance
Takeaway #1: Why Storage Revenues Are Under Pressure and What Can Be Done
The most-discussed topic covered growing concern related to shrinking revenue for storage. As framed, the success of storage in terms of volume of MW installed has compressed price spreads, which have reduced energy arbitrage revenues for storage.
Panelists discussed opportunities that should be explored for compensation to improve the overall revenue stream for storage. One option included monetizing the broader reliability and decarbonization benefits related to storage through Integrated Resource Planning, Resource Adequacy, and clean energy procurement requirements.
Overall, increasing the revenue streams will be an important aspect for maintaining the investment signal needed to support continued large-scale energy storage development.
Takeaway #2: How Will Storage Fit Into Resource Adequacy and EDAM?
Discussions around Resource Adequacy and EDAM followed in the footsteps of the CAISO Symposium and focused on how storage resources will participate in and/or support the broader Western EDAM. Some shared that a level of change will be required in Resource Adequacy and market design.
Takeaway #3: Can Storage Keep Pace with the Data Center Boom?
The discussion moved to how storage can help bridge the significant increase in load demand created by the data center boom, and how we can address the potential reliability implications of this. Long-duration energy storage was also mentioned, with an emphasis on storage technologies capable of providing multi-day reliability support beyond conventional 4-hour lithium-ion batteries.
While this discussion was separate from the AI and Data Center Load Growth discussion, the two go hand-in-hand in both supporting California's reliability and decarbonization targets in light of growing load demand.
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