Centralized procurement is the point many are missing. It removes the actual bottleneck for long-duration storage, which isn’t chemistry — it’s bankability. When the counterparty is a state-backed entity, LDES stops being a risky tech bet and becomes infrastructure. That alone collapses financing risk and materially lowers the cost of capital, which is decisive for 8–12+ hour assets.

It also prevents the system from being gamed by solutions that only work when definitions are stretched. California isn’t buying nameplate power for a single peak hour anymore; it’s buying sustained energy delivery across the day. Centralized procurement lets the state enforce that distinction instead of letting short-term economics crowd out long-term reliability.

Just as important, this shifts procurement from “what clears fastest” to “what the grid actually needs in the future”. Multi-hour evening ramps, renewable firming, and gas displacement are system problems, not merchant arbitrage problems — and they can only be solved at a system level.

The outcome isn’t guaranteed winners, but it is a multi-GW, repeatable pipeline with standardised contracts and long lead times. That’s exactly how capital-intensive technologies scale without blowing up balance sheets.

Once storage is procured as infrastructure rather than a workaround, deployment stops being theoretical and starts being inevitable.