The technology is slightly different than the more expensive high-end 7.2 kW/20 kWh ecoLinx system used in Soleil Lofts with its 15,000 cycles and a 25-year wrap-around warranty. Richetta commented on the significance of ES Solar’s commitment, “you’ve got a major solar contractor saying ‘we are changing our business model and abandoning the idea of grid independence to create the grid of the future requiring collaboration with the utility.’ They’re selling this idea that if you have solar, add a battery.” In addition, over a thousand additional customers sit in the WattSmart Battery program queue, driven largely by the efforts of ES Solar, the largest residential solar installer in Utah. Hundreds of battery systems have already been installed and are being dispatched by the utility on a daily basis. commented that this new retrofit program represented the culmination of “years of work and tons of talk.” He expressed a general frustration with the pace of change in other utility service territories, noting “The grid of the future is supposed to be more responsive, and digitalized, but to date it’s been mostly half measures.” Other dispatchable virtual power plants have been announced, he asserted, but none have yet been developed in which the utility is currently controlling the on-site batteries on a daily basis.īy contrast, Richetta noted, Rocky Mountain Power has moved proactively to create a distributed Battery Grid Management System (BGMS ), and the WattSmart program is well underway. The utility always leaves some energy in the battery for back-up, but since they don’t actually own the battery, they don’t guarantee it).Ĭreating the grid of the future takes work and coordination: In an interview, Blake Richetta – Chairman and CEO of sonnen, Inc. The customer thus gets a subsidized battery which is designed to provide back-up power in the event of an outage (although, per the contract terms, Rocky Mountain Power does not guarantee that the battery will be charged or available during all system outages. Payments include an upfront enrollment incentive of $600 per kilowatt (kW) for a four-year commitment, plus a participation incentive of $15 per kW per year. The program– with an eventual goal of aggregating 100 megawatts (MW) of dispatchable energy storage - offers payments to solar customers who add a battery system and allow the utility to control it. In January of this year, Utah utility Rocky Mountain Power launched WattSmart Batteries, a new battery energy storage retrofit program for its 50,000 customers with existing on-site solar arrays.
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