Sunrun has networked greater than 16,200 clients’ photo voltaic + storage programs to assist California’s electrical grid throughout the scorching summer season months. Sunrun’s CalReady energy plant will scale back pressure on the grid by supplying crucial vitality to communities that want it all through California with a view to scale back prices and assist forestall energy emergencies.
For the second 12 months in a row, Sunrun is demonstrating how uniquely succesful, dependable and available its photo voltaic + storage programs are as an important grid resolution. In the summertime of 2023, Sunrun’s Peak Energy Rewards program equipped Pacific Gasoline and Electrical Firm (PG&E) as much as 32 MW of energy throughout night peak hours from 8,500 clients’ batteries. This summer season, Sunrun is anticipated to roughly double that capability and participant quantity for the statewide Demand Facet Grid Help program.
“We’re on the forefront of a customer-led revolution to a cleaner, extra inexpensive clear vitality future. When introduced with the chance to assist, Sunrun’s clients at all times step as much as be a part of the answer,” mentioned Sunrun CEO Mary Powell. “By sharing their clear solar energy, they’re making California’s grid extra resilient for everybody. Sunrun’s CalReady is much and away the most important digital energy plant within the nation and serves as a mannequin for what the electrical grid of the longer term ought to appear to be.”
Designed and administered by the California Power Fee, the Demand Facet Grid Help program is a part of California’s Strategic Reliability Reserve which goals to spice up vitality provides throughout warmth waves, wildfires and different excessive occasions. Because the tens of hundreds of enrolled batteries from aggregators stabilize the grid, the chance of rolling blackouts is lowered.
As the most important aggregator within the Demand Facet Grid Help program, Sunrun will monitor and dispatch its clients’ enrolled batteries, making it a hassle-free expertise. Sunrun clients enrolled in CalReady might be compensated for sharing their saved photo voltaic vitality with the grid and Sunrun might be paid for dispatching the batteries.
“A Sunrun buyer’s battery simply acquired extra rewarding in California,” Powell mentioned. “A typical buyer gained’t even discover that they’re sharing their saved energy to bolster the grid whereas getting compensated for doing so. As a storage-first firm, we’re all about stacking advantages to offer probably the most worth to our clients, communities and grid companions.”
CalReady might be accessible to assist California’s grid every day from 4 to 9 p.m. from Might by October — the time of day and season when there’s the best demand for vitality and the grid is most weak to outages. Sunrun clients’ batteries will nonetheless retain, at minimal, a backup reserve of 20% in order that they will proceed to energy their houses within the occasion of a neighborhood energy outage.
“The good thing about Sunrun’s fleet of many thousand batteries is that they are often orchestrated in unison. It’s the size, pace and capability that makes Sunrun’s digital energy crops so precious,” mentioned Chris Rauscher, Sunrun’s Head of Grid Providers. “Similar to how a centralized fossil gas energy plant is managed and dispatched by a single entity, so too is Sunrun’s CalReady digital energy plant—making it a strong contributor to California’s grid. As a result of CalReady is a distributed useful resource unfold throughout households statewide, it’s extra resilient and adaptable when in comparison with a bodily energy plant.”
In the course of the 5 months of this system, the California Power Fee might name upon Sunrun’s enrolled photo voltaic + storage programs as much as 35 instances to produce supplemental vitality to the grid and the communities that it helps. Enrollment in Sunrun’s CalReady is ongoing and, with buyer outreach persevering with, participation is anticipated to develop.
Information merchandise from Sunrun
