Sunrun to Put 5MW of Home Systems in VPP for California Utility Resource Adequacy Program
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Sunrun is optimistic about the potential of aggregate home systems to provide service and capacity to utilities and the grid. Picture: Sunrun.
U.S. residential solar installer and rental company Sunrun will consolidate solar home and storage systems into a virtual power plant (VPP) capable of providing 5MW of grid support, with California utility Southern California Edison (SCE).
Sunrun announced yesterday that it has signed a contract with SCE, one of California’s leading investor-owned utilities (IOU). The solar company’s Brightbox home energy storage packages will respond to signals from SCE to deliver their stored energy capacity to the grid during times of stress and high demand for the grid, such as during extreme heat waves such as California suffered this summer.
Through this contract, the systems will participate in the Resource Adequacy (RA) program of the regional network and market operator, California Independent System Operator (CAISO). Resource Adequacy is the means by which CAISO ensures the lights stay on in-state and has been a major driver for solar and storage installations in California, including large-scale projects.
Sunrun added that at least 10% of this RA capacity will come from Sunrun devices installed in low to moderate income households. The company will begin installing systems for this program at the end of this year, and all installations are expected to be completed by August 2023.
Sunrun executives, including CEO Lynn Jurich, have said in the past that enabling solar and storage systems to provide services for the grid generates revenue for the business that can be used to reduce the overall cost of the grid. energy for its customers.
The contract follows a first demonstration of 300 homes announced with SCE in June of this year. Elsewhere, Sunrun said earlier this month that it would offer Brighbox, which bundles equipment from vendors including battery and battery systems company LG Chem, to all U.S. markets in which Sunrun operates.
Also in June of this year, the company announced that it has partnered with Distributed Energy Resource Management (DER) platform vendor AutoGrid, to have AutoGrid’s Flex software platform manage Brightbox systems. when they are grouped into fleets. Sunrun said at the time that it had by then amassed $ 50 million in network service projects, either already under contract or underway.
This story first appeared on PV Tech.
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