Back
CLEAN ENERGY: The Department of Energy says clean energy jobs last year grew at twice the rate of other sectors, with unionization rates higher than in the broader energy industry. (Reuters)
CLIMATE:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: The Biden administration announces $521 million in grants for electric vehicle charging, and says the number of publicly available chargers has doubled since 2021. (Utility Dive)
GRID:
OIL & GAS:
UTILITIES: Illinois ratepayers have paid an extra $1.8 billion since 2015 by choosing alternative energy suppliers over traditional utilities like ComEd and Ameren, according to a consumer advocate’s analysis. (Daily Herald)
SOLAR: Opponents of a proposed 800 MW Ohio solar project may turn to the state Supreme Court to block the project after regulators denied repeated challenges. (WCMH)
COMMENTARY:
SOLAR: The Biden administration finalizes its Western solar plan aimed at expediting development on 31 million acres of federal land in 11 states. (Reuters)
ALSO: A Utah county postpones a deal to install a solar array at a local airport to gather more information, but says it plans to move forward with the project later. (Moab Times-Independent)
PUBLIC LANDS: Federal courts prepare to consider several lawsuits seeking to diminish a president’s power to ban future mining and oil and gas drilling on some federal lands via national monument designation. (Bloomberg Law)
EFFICIENCY: The U.S. Energy Department awards Western states and cities $115.2 million to develop, implement and upgrade building performance standards and energy codes for commercial and multi-family structures. (news release, RTO Insider, subscription)
CLIMATE: Colorado awards local governments $1.9 million to support climate action plans and efficiency and sustainable energy programs. (news release)
STORAGE:
GRID:
OIL & GAS:
POLLUTION: Alaska advocates call on federal regulators to ban cruise ship exhaust scrubbers, saying the air-pollution mitigation systems contaminate ocean water. (KTOO)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
CLEAN ENERGY: The National Science Foundation awards a Hawaii university $4.2 million for clean energy research and education. (Kauai Now)
CLEAN ENERGY: Researchers estimate the clean energy transition will demand $1 trillion in federal spending by 2031, though only $66 billion — or 6% of that total — has been distributed so far via the Inflation Reduction Act. (Grist)
BATTERIES: The federal government is reportedly considering shoring up domestic projects that process critical minerals for clean energy applications as they face steep competition from cheaper Chinese materials. (Politico)
WIND:
GRID:
POLITICS: In her first formal interview as the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris promises she won’t ban fracking if elected. (Axios)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
SOLAR: Observers say a growing number of Western water managers are considering covering irrigation canals with solar panels to generate power and reduce evaporation. (Water Education)
EFFICIENCY: University of Maryland scientists are leading research into energy-efficient air conditioners. (Inside Climate News)
UTILITIES: Advocates push back on proposed California legislation aimed at reducing utility bills, saying it would gut low-income clean energy programs without significantly increasing affordability. (Canary Media)
ACTIVISM: Environmental and community activists oppose a federal loan for a project exploring whether plastic could be a viable replacement for coal as fuel for steelmaking. (Inside Climate News)
COMMENTARY: PJM’s latest capacity auction with sky-high prices should not be a cause for panic and shows that the grid operator’s market is catching up to the rest of the country in needing to manage supply changes, a former regulator writes. (Utility Dive)
WIND: Federal ocean energy regulators give the country’s first floating offshore wind research lease to Maine for a project of up to 12 turbines near Portland; the state first sought the lease in 2021. (Associated Press)
ALSO: Federal officials grant $89 million to Eversource to develop its Huntsbrook Offshore Wind Hub on the southeastern Connecticut coast, building a new interconnection point for future projects. (news release)
GRID:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
SOLAR:
FOSSIL FUELS: Pennsylvania’s energy production will collapse, making it a “Third World” state, if Vice President Kamala Harris becomes president and enacts her fracking policies, former President Donald Trump claims. (Philadelphia Inquirer)
UTILITIES:
TRANSPORTATION: The Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority seeks public comment on its plan to build a new Amtrak station for Portland that would reduce Downeaster trip times by an estimated 15 minutes. (Portland Press Herald)
FLOODS: A storm sweeps New England, dropping historic rainfall totals on parts of Connecticut and New York and causing widespread floods; Connecticut officials expect a lengthy recovery. (NBC News, CT Mirror)
COMMENTARY: PJM Interconnection pushes back on criticism that its planning processes aren’t helping accelerate the energy transition, saying its power grid reforms are working. (Baltimore Banner)
HYDROGEN: A New Mexico electric cooperative looks to establish a green hydrogen production facility at a defunct mine and Superfund site in the northern part of the state. (High Country News)
SOLAR: Developers break ground on a 140 MW solar-plus-storage installation on the Jicarilla Apache Nation in northern New Mexico. (Albuquerque Journal)
ALSO:
CLEAN ENERGY:
OIL & GAS:
GRID: Data show natural gas remains California’s largest single energy source even though renewable, carbon-free sources provided 100% of the state’s electricity during 100 days so far this year. (CalMatters)
UTILITIES: A Washington state clean energy grant program has awarded $200 utility bill credits to about 50,000 low-income families since launching in July. (Spokesman-Review)
CLIMATE:
TRANSPORTATION: California regulators abandon a proposal to require jet fuel suppliers to pay for greenhouse gas emissions, saying it will look to incentivize sustainable fuel production instead. (E&E News, subscription)
COAL: Federal researchers find a Canada coal mine is sending pollution some 350 miles downstream and across the border to the Columbia River in the Northwest. (Montana Free Press)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: San Francisco Bay Area cities consider establishing electric bicycle regulations following an increase in related accidents. (Mercury News)
STORAGE: Illinois lawmakers consider establishing energy storage incentives as a new study suggests ramping up storage may be the most realistic path for maintaining grid reliability as the state phases out fossil fuels. (Energy News Network)
ELECTRIC VEHICLES:
CLEAN ENERGY:
UTILITIES: CenterPoint Energy issues a request for proposals from developers to build hundreds of megawatts of renewable energy and other generation sources as part of its long-term energy strategy in Indiana. (Utility Dive)
GRID:
WORKFORCE:
COAL: Consumers Energy will soon offer public tours of a coal plant along Lake Michigan that’s scheduled to be decommissioned within the next year. (MLive, subscription)
COMMENTARY:
CLEAN ENERGY: State policies could supercharge utility-scale clean energy deployment, but experts say too-rapid an expansion could strengthen opposition, and that local participation in the siting process is still key. (Utility Dive)
POLITICS:
GRID:
WIND:
ELECTRIC VEHICLES: Kentucky has attracted more than $11.5 billion in electric vehicle-related investments since 2020, but lagging vehicle sales and a partisan split over the industry create uncertainty about its future. (Louisville Courier-Journal)
COAL:
PIPELINES: Tribal leaders in northern Wisconsin continue their fight to shut down the Line 5 pipeline in the “Everglades of the North,” where they fear a spill would decimate areas for wild rice and fishing. (Inside Climate News)
SOLAR: A Swiss firm cancels plans to establish a solar cell manufacturing plant in Colorado, saying market distortions have rendered the project financially unviable. (Reuters)
EMISSIONS: North Carolina’s ratepayer advocate, Walmart, and other critics of Duke Energy’s initial decarbonization plan relent and endorse a settlement that includes construction of 9 GW of new natural gas plants and more solar. (Energy News Network)
COMMENTARY: A Harris campaign adviser calls for a “Clean Energy Marshall Plan” that would finance foreign investments in renewables and the creation of international clean energy supply chains and trade agreements. (Foreign Affairs)
Stay up-to-date with free briefings on topics that matter to all Californians. Subscribe to CalMatters today for nonprofit news in your inbox.
California has given America a glimpse at what running one of the world’s largest economies on renewable energy might look like.
The state recently hit a milestone: 100 days this year with 100% carbon-free, renewable electricity for at least a part of each day, as tracked by Stanford University engineering Professor Mark Z. Jacobson.
The state notched the milestone while — so far — avoiding blackouts and emergency power reductions this year, even with the hottest July on record.
That progress is largely due to the substantial public and private investments in renewable energy — particularly batteries storing solar power to use when the sun isn’t shining, according to energy experts.
“California has made unprecedented investments in our power grid in recent years — and we’re seeing them pay off in real time,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement to CalMatters. “Not only is our grid more reliable and resilient, it’s also increasingly running on 100% clean electricity.”
The state faces a huge challenge in coming years: A series of mandates will require carbon-free energy while also putting more electric cars on roads and electric appliances in homes. California, under state law, must run on 60% renewable energy by 2030, ramping up to 100% by 2045.
Signs of progress are emerging. From January to mid-July of this year, zero-carbon, renewable energy exceeded demand in California for 945 hours during 146 days — equivalent to a month-and-a-half of 100% fossil-fuel-free electricity, according to the California Energy Commission, the state agency tasked with carrying out the clean energy mandates.
But California still has a long way to go to stop burning fossil fuels for electricity. Natural gas, which emits greenhouse gases and air pollutants, remains its single largest source of electricity.
Just over half of power generated for Californians in 2022 came from solar, wind, other renewables and nuclear power, while 36% came from natural gas plants.
Reliability of the power grid is a top concern as the state switches to solar and wind energy. Unpredictable events like wildfires and winter storms also cause outages, while hot summer months, with air conditioners whirring, strain the supply.
In August of 2020 California experienced its first non-wildfire blackouts in nearly 20 years, and in late August and September of 2022, a severe heatwave forced regulators to ask consumers to voluntarily reduce power for 10 days.
Since September 2022 — when California teetered on the edge of those blackouts and the governor pleaded for conservation — nearly 11,600 new megawatts of clean energy have been added to the state’s grid, said Elliot Mainzer, chief executive of the California Independent System Operator, which manages the grid. (That’s enough to power around 9 to 12 million homes although it’s not available all at one time.)
California also now has more than 10,000 megawatts of battery capacity, making it the largest supply outside of China. Battery power from large commercial facilities proved its worth during last month’s heat wave, Mainzer said.
Batteries “were a major difference-maker,” Mainzer said. “The batteries charged during the day, when solar energy is abundant, and then they put that energy back onto the grid in the afternoon and evening, when solar production is rolling off the system.”
California relies heavily on four-hour duration lithium-ion batteries, which come in large, centralized facilities and hybrid facilities paired with solar energy projects. More homes also are installing batteries with their rooftop solar installations, but they supply a small amount of power.
Planning and practicing various emergency scenarios has also helped immensely, Mainzer said.
“Our grid operators are now increasingly experienced at managing these extreme heat events,” Mainzer said. “Our forecasters also did an excellent job of reviewing the next day’s conditions so that the market could respond effectively.”
California may need to more than double its energy generation capacity by 2045 to meet the 100% clean energy target while adding electric cars, appliances and other technologies, said Siva Gunda, who sits on the California Energy Commission.
To do that, California aims to build about 6,000 to 8,000 megawatts of new energy resources each year. The state hit a record last year, adding more than 6,000 megawatts, Gunda said. Each megawatt is enough to serve between 750 and 1,000 homes.
“The table is set,” Gunda said. “The pieces are there for success, and it’s about executing it, together with a common vision and collaboration.”
The commission is closely monitoring a new concern: Artificial intelligence technology, which uses large data centers that consume power. “We’re carefully watching where the loads are going to grow,” Gunda said.
Stanford’s Jacobson said running on 100% renewable energy is becoming more common.
Over the July 28 weekend, California marked the 100th nonconsecutive day within a 144-day stretch in which 100% of electricity came from renewable sources for periods ranging from five minutes to more than 10 hours, he said.
On April 8, a solar eclipse reduced solar power generation and increased demand on the grid, which was met by batteries. On May 5, wind, hydroelectric and solar energy reached more than 160% of demand for a significant portion of the day.
California continues to waffle about ending its reliance on natural gas and nuclear power.
Fearing emergency rolling blackouts like the one in 2020, Newsom and the Legislature in 2022 allowed some natural gas plants that were supposed to go offline to keep operating.
And the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant will continue operating while Pacific Gas & Electric pursues federal permission to stay open past 2025. Nuclear power is considered renewable and carbon-free but it creates radioactive waste.
State officials and private investors aim to create an entirely new industry — giant floating ocean wind platforms — to produce 13% of California’s power, enough to power 25 million homes, by 2045. The massive projects will cost billions of dollars.
Some Democratic legislators are hoping to make it easier to build wind and solar projects, since sometimes local obstacles and permitting take years. They are negotiating an end-of-session package of proposed laws that could streamline construction, CalMatters reported earlier this month. California’s legislative session ends Aug. 31.
Jacobson said the cost of large-scale solar power projects has “dropped substantially” in recent decades largely because of “economies of scale — just the huge growth of solar on a worldwide scale.”
“There’s no miracle technology that was developed,” he said. “It’s just subtle improvements in existing technologies and deployment, deployment, deployment.”
Editor’s note: Miles Braxton’s company is Okovate Sustainable Energy. A previous version of this post misspelled the company’s name.
Agrivoltaics — co-locating solar arrays with farming operations — is generating enthusiasm among both farmers and clean energy advocates as a way to promote sustainability in agriculture.
When implemented correctly, agrivoltaics provides a vital dual income stream for farmers — in solar energy generation, but also as a means of providing an optimal growing environment for compatible crops and herds. The added revenue may allow more farmers to retain their land for themselves and future generations.
While pilot projects around the country are identifying best practices, not all have been successful, and practitioners say that advancing the technology will require an equitable approach that centers farmers’ needs first.
A discussion during the recent Solar Farm Summit in Rosemont, Illinois, directly addressed the issue, featuring a majority-Black panel of practitioners and service providers. Three major themes emerged during the discussion: maximizing compatibility of solar arrays with existing land use, demonstrating the financial benefits of agrivoltaics, and addressing how solar power can help BIPOC farmers hold on to their land.
“I think one thing that, through our work in this technical assistance, has become very, very clear [is] that people don’t just want to build an agrivoltaics project for the sake of building an agrivoltaics project,” said Jordan Macknick of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), who also served as moderator for the discussion. “How does agrivoltaics enable you to take that next step and focus on things like succession planning or farmer training?”
Miles Braxton started his company, Okovate Sustainable Energy, to work exclusively on “farmer-focused” solar development.
Braxton said after several years of developing community solar projects, he “really saw the inefficiencies” of taking farmland out of production for solar projects. “That’s a problem that is just going to keep piling on top of itself until it gets to the point where we can’t develop anything.
“We target crop farmers who are growing a very specific suite of crops that we know works well with our design,” Braxton said.
Cetta Barnhart, owner of Seed Time Harvest Farms in Florida, also cultivates her own plot of fruits and vegetables, and cited her background in food and wellness in promoting the compatibility of solar and agriculture to benefit the bottom line for farmers.
“This is more hands-on of what a farmer can really do in their current practices. If they’re raising cattle, there’s a way that they implement solar with that. If they are having bare land, the pollinator is another way that they can benefit from that,” she said. “So how these solar projects are developed and created for real farmers is still a big conversation to be had.“
Ena Jones, owner of Roots & Vine Produce and Café, and president of Community Partners for Black Farmers, cited her dual role as a working farmer and an advocate as an advantage in promoting the potential compatibility of agrivoltaics and cultivation — especially for Black farmers.
“We advocate and we also lobby for farmers at the state level for the state of Illinois and the state of Georgia. And I’m here to kind of segue to help farmers understand … how different solar opportunities can help them with production on their farms, and be an asset to the production on their farms. And also, to help solar developers understand farm[ing],” Jones said.
Noting that solar projects can help cut energy costs, Jones said “Energy use is one of the farmer’s [major] expenses outside of diesel, and of course seed. So, if they can reduce that cost dramatically, even by a third, that would impact their bottom line in revenue extensively. It is very important, especially for BIPOC farmers, to be ushered into this technology so that they won’t be left behind in the process.”
Agrivoltaics can be a valuable tool to reduce overall costs, expand potential revenue – or both – as a means of promoting optimal use of farmland. A both-and approach can work to address what is often an inherent tension between the best use of large, flat plots of land for large solar arrays – parcels that also frequently comprise some of the richest soil for cultivation.
For example, the 180 MW Madison Fields project in Ohio represents a test ground for large-scale agrivoltaics – farming on 1,900 acres between the rows of a utility-scale solar array. One of the project’s focuses is determining which crops and herds are the best prospects to coexist with large-scale solar developments.
“People have a lot of questions with regard to energy development going forward in this state … Finding a balance where you can do a number of things on the same ground — in this case energy production as well as agricultural production — is obviously huge,” Dale Arnold, director of energy policy for the Ohio Farm Bureau told the Energy News Network in July.
Macknick highlighted another project where NREL and Clean Energy to Communities (C2C), along with the Black Farmers Collaborative, worked on a proof of concept project which incorporated solar panels on a demonstration farm cultivated by Barnhart that features citrus trees, leafy greens, and other produce.
“I had already looked into doing solar on my property and was just looking at it to have solar as the backup,” Barnhart said. “But when we started talking as a team and then we found out about the agrivoltaics portion [and] how that can be incorporated into farming, it really brought forth a bigger and better opportunity to not just benefit by having it but also sharing that with other farmers,” Barnhart told NREL in 2023.
Mike DellaGala of Solar Collective said taking a farmer-centered approach can also be beneficial to product and service providers.
“I think a lot of the conversation … has been the difference between farmers and developers, and how we are or [are] not communicating and getting projects over the finish line or not. And I think… if you’re farmer-first or farmer-centric, I think that’s the way to success for everybody… allowing [farmers] to dictate a lot of the project details has been really successful for us. And it makes our job easier, frankly,” DellaGala said.
A farmer-centric and collaborative approach is especially vital in ensuring equitable access to the benefits of agrivoltaics for BIPOC farmers, Barnhart said.
“I stand in the gap somewhat between having conversations with [BIPOC] farmers and having conversations with project developers because you need someone in the middle. I’m a community advocate. I hope there are more of us in the room than not. They have to be in place in order to bridge the conversation as to how this really works well in real-life time,” Barnhart said.
Braxton cited the need to rein in the power of utilities, which he says frequently raise roadblocks to community-level projects to protect their own interests.
“Utilities have too much power. They have too much money to lobby. They don’t want you to sell power back to your community because [of the impact to] their own rates that they can control. So that’s a risk. The root of those problems is that here in the U.S. … we have 50 little countries [states] that make up their own policies and do their own thing… I think there needs to be a policy to incentivize solar to be developed innovatively. I don’t think policy makers at the state level understand the importance of that,” Braxton said.
Jones noted that policy change will likely be driven by farmer demand, which by extension benefits the larger community.
“In my opinion, once the farmers understand [how solar can] help them on their farms, I can’t say this enough, they will force politicians to comply. The money will be there; the funding will be there. But the engagement needs to happen. It desperately needs to happen,” she said.
Loss of land –through racism and other factors, has long been a contentious topic among BIPOC farmers – and Black farmers in particular. According to a 2022 study, discriminatory federal policies contributed to Black farmers losing roughly $326 billion worth of acreage during the 20th century. In July, the Biden-Harris administration announced a distribution of $2 billion to thousands of Black and other minority farmers, created through the Inflation Reduction Act as a means to begin to address this inequity.
Agrivoltaics may not intuitively track as a relevant strategy for land retention; but Barnhart touted its value, especially for Black farmers.
“[Black farmers] have lost a lot of land because we just couldn’t afford to keep it… We didn’t just lose land because it was confiscated… What solar does is add an income stream or a reduction in your expenses so that there’s more you can do on your farm and create an opportunity for the next generation.
“It gives us a reason to keep the land going, and it gives us, in our community, resiliency we are experiencing through our climate change storms. For the families that can have that piece of land, that builds a resiliency to protect them in their neighborhoods, protect their own backyard, and protect the future generations, give the future generations something they can look forward to that makes sense to them. Then we build into something that takes care of our wealth building opportunities, our succession planning, and our look into the future to make a change,” Barnhart said.
Xcel Energy is proposing a new approach to powering the grid in Minnesota.
The utility recently told state regulators it wants to build a network of solar-powered energy storage hubs, located strategically on its grid and linked with technology so they can be operated in concert with each other.
The result would be what’s known as a “virtual power plant.” By simultaneously discharging the batteries, for example, the collection of distributed resources can function similar to a conventional power plant.
It’s a solution some clean energy advocates have long pushed for as an alternative to larger, centrally located projects that are more reliant on long-distance transmission and create fewer local economic benefits. Xcel’s new embrace of the concept likely reflects the evolving economics of clean energy and the urgency to replace generation from retiring coal-fired power plants.
“I welcome our now-agreement about the importance of distributed energy resources in their future procurement plans,” said John Farrell, director of the Energy Democracy Initiative at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
Virtual power plants use sophisticated software and technology to aggregate energy from batteries, smart thermostats, electric vehicles, storage and other connected devices. The clean energy nonprofit RMI predicts virtual power plants nationally could reduce peak loads by 60 gigawatts and cut annual energy expenditures by $17 billion by 2030.
Several utilities, as well as solar and storage companies, have developed virtual power plant programs around the country. Perhaps the best-known is National Grid’s ConnectedSolutions program in New England, which includes residential batteries, electric vehicle batteries, and thermostats.
In May, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed legislation requiring Xcel Energy to create a virtual power plant plan in that state by next February.
Xcel is pitching the Minnesota project on its own as part of its latest long-range resource plan. In a recent Public Utilities Commission filing, Xcel proposes combining 440 megawatts of solar power with 400 megawatts of battery storage at dispersed locations. Designed to be flexible, the program might add backup generation and energy efficiency measures in the future.
A virtual power plant, Xcel said, would save ratepayers money, improve reliability, accelerate clean energy development, and reduce energy disparities by playing assets in underserved communities. The “new approach equips us to confidently meet incoming load growth, deliver unique customer and community value, and support economic development,” the company said in its filing.
Kevin Coss, a spokesperson for the company, said the proposal “is part of a larger plan to better serve the grid and our customers while meeting anticipated growth in energy demand. The program would grow our distributed energy resources as a complement to our existing plans for additional utility-scale renewable and firm dispatchable generation to advance the clean energy transition.”
Clean energy advocates say the approach could reduce Xcel’s need to build more infrastructure at a time when electricity demand continues to grow and its fleet of aging fossil fuel plants reach closure dates.
A recent study in Illinois suggested that pairing solar with storage could be the most economical and environmentally beneficial way to maintain grid reliability as the state transitions to 100% clean energy.
“Utilities always treated distributed energy resources as something that happened to them and that they had to figure out how to accommodate because they were being told to,” said Will Kenworthy, Vote Solar’s Midwest regulatory director.
The company’s interest in more distributed resources could lead to a more flexible grid, one that helps mitigate substations congestion and allows it to store energy from wind farms for use during high-demand periods, Kenworthy said.
One area of disagreement between the utility and some clean energy advocates is who should own the facilities. Unlike in Colorado, Xcel is proposing to own the Minnesota solar and storage hubs itself, collecting money to build them — plus a rate of return — from ratepayers.
That’s not the best deal for customers, and it prevents local communities and developers from being able to share the financial benefits of distributed energy, said Farrell, of the Energy Democracy Initiative. If Xcel owns the virtual power plant, the cost could be higher than they would be with an open, competitive process.
Farrell pointed to the recent opposition to an Xcel electric vehicle charging plan in which it sought to own all of the chargers. Convenience stores and gas stations argued Xcel had an unfair market advantage as the incumbent utility and would own too much of the state’s charging network. Xcel withdrew the proposal in 2023 after regulators reduced the charging network’s size.
As Xcel’s plan evolves, Farrell wants Xcel to allow businesses, homeowners, and aggregators to also participate by selling their battery capacity or demand response into the program.
The Minnesota Solar Energy Industries Association, which promotes battery storage, also takes a dim view of Xcel owning a virtual power plant.
“This is an area where competition would likely provide better service, lower cost and more choice to ratepayers,” said regulatory and policy affairs director Curtis Zaun. “Monopolies are not particularly good at providing the best service at a reasonable rate because that is inconsistent with their investors’ interests.”
Virtual power plants are different than demand response, such as thermostat savings programs, in that they add value to the grid “without any change needed to the homeowner’s behavior,” said Amy Heart, senior vice president for policy at Sunrun, a home solar and storage company that participates in virtual power plants in the Northeast and in Texas, California, and Puerto Rico.
Heart said the “devil is in the details” when creating a robust demand response program. A program in Arizona failed, she said, because of the underperformance of the single company it selected to aggregate resources.
Sunrun developed a virtual power plant in four New England states, enrolling more than 5,000 solar and storage customers to share their capacity on the grid. In the summer of 2022, Sunrun’s virtual power plant shared more than 1.8 gigawatt hours of electricity.
Typically, Sunrun customers agree under contract to share a portion of their battery backup 30 to 60 times annually for three hours or less for each event. The process is automated, with Sunrun’s software connecting to customer batteries and sending utilities power during high-demand times or predictable peak loads. Customers receive payment for the electricity provided.
Heart said the best systems are open to individual customers and aggregators using different battery storage brands. Giving a virtual power plant “room to grow, breathe, and adapt will be important,” she added.
The Xcel virtual power plant proposal is part of the multi-year Upper Midwest Integrated Resource Plan, which regulators have been reviewing and will likely approve, with many changes, later this year.
.svg)
