A network of more than 300 solar-powered homes began supplementing New York’s grid this summer — the result of an unusual partnership that could unlock more localized clean energy for the state.

Sunthe nation’s largest rooftop solar installer, has teamed up with utility Orange & Rockland, which serves some 300,000 customers in suburban and rural areas northwest of New York City, to offer an attractive deal : Households signing up for solar power with Sunrun could also benefit from a free LG Chem battery or a discounted Tesla Powerwall.

“It’s pretty hard to turn this down,” said Christian Woods, the energy storage project manager overseeing the program for Orange & Rockland. Instead, he said, customers wondered if it was “too good to be true.”

State funding made it possible, in the form of a 10-year trial, to leverage customers’ clean energy devices to serve the wider grid. The only real problem is that participating batteries sometimes have to discharge their stored solar energy during times when it helps the grid, usually during peak demand hours between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. But batteries always maintain a reserve of at least 20% of their capacity. , in case customers need backup power overnight.

So far, 325 Orange & Rockland customers have installed the solar battery systems, and a few dozen more will do so by the end of the year, Woods told Canary Media. This makes the program the largest program in New York virtual power plant (VPP), an industry term for aggregates of customer-owned energy devices that are digitally controlled to support the electrical system.

The utility tapped Sunrun to deliver electricity from the grid 18 times over the summer and will continue to test the company’s ability to meet day-ahead and same-day demands . The utility is also studying how the program helps avoid capital-intensive upgrades for local parts of the power grid. This demonstration will only contribute about 2 megawatts of overall capacity, Woods said. But if the test is successful, this sort of thing could be expanded to play a much bigger role in New York’s mission to eliminate fossil fuels from its energy system.

“While large-scale deployment faces hurdles around location, interconnection, and construction of poles and cables, we are deploying batteries and residential solar panels behind the meter every day and every month,” said Chris Rauscher, Sunrun’s network services and VPP manager. Canarian Media. “We’re reaching a really meaningful scale here, and when you put them together into aggregations, you get a utility-scale resource.”

This observation, that small clean energy projects can create big things, is particularly relevant to New York. The state has set many “cutting edge” climate goals – 70% renewable energy by 2030, 100% by 2040 – but has struggled to build large, clean power plants. Officials expect to miss the interim 2030 deadline by three years, after offshore wind deals failed and with grid-wide battery installations repeatedly lag behind stated goals.

In contrast to these struggles, distributed solar power, such as that installed on the roofs of homes and businesses, has seen rapid success. In fact, New York achieved its legally binding objective to install 6 gigawatts of distributed solar a year ahead of schedule, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said earlier this month.

Rooftop solar power alone will not clean the grid outside of sunlight hours. But rooftop solar and batteries can meet more of the grid’s needs, as the new Sunrun program shows.

What happens when a utility and a startup collaborate

Over the years, the U.S. rooftop solar industry has often found itself in an antagonistic relationship with utilities. Solar entrepreneurs are pitching themselves as cleaner, friendlier alternatives to the old monopolies they hope to disrupt. Utilities, in turn, tend to throw their political weight behind reducing customer incentives for distributed energy.

This New York project shows what can be achieved when an old-school utility and a new-school solar company come together as partners with complementary skills.

“Virtual power plants combine the core competencies of a utility and an aggregator,” Rauscher said. He described the collaboration with Orange & Rockland as “a really healthy working relationship.”

This was made possible by a funding stream allocated years ago for energy vision reform, a once common but now rarely uttered term for New York’s set of policy changes aimed at overhauling the grid. Support from state utility regulators, who are legally responsible for pursuing the state’s climate goals, has also been critical.

Orange & Rockland and Sunrun signed a contract for the project in 2018, when home batteries were still a booming consumer product. They spent time developing the program, then Covid happened. But customer installations picked up again two and a half years ago and have gained momentum again this year.

Orange & Rockland, a subsidiary of Consolidated Edison, brought detailed knowledge of where in its distribution network where localized electricity could be most beneficial. The utility also used old-fashioned techniques to educate its customers about the new proposal: it presented its new proposal at local Earth Day fairs, met with environmental groups, and printed 40,000 tri-fold brochures that it sent out by mail to every customer living in areas designated by the state as disadvantaged communities, after which 50 percent of registrations came from those households, Woods said.

While utilities elsewhere jealously guard their central role in the electricity system, Orange & Rockland has been content to let Sunrun direct the mechanics of installing, owning and operating solar battery systems. “It’s not our livelihood,” Woods noted, adding that utility linemen specialize in maintaining the grid, not troubleshooting home batteries (the utility is not no longer permitted to own electricity generation under New York regulations). And Sunrun has spent years installing solar panels and batteries, and developing the software capabilities needed to distribute these decentralized assets in predictable ways. Rauscher pointed out that Sunrun’s VPP design makes things easy from a utility perspective: Everything Sunrun needs to operate is in the home (on the “customer side of the meter,” in industry parlance). ).

“We’re not trying to tell (the utility) what its needs are or when they’re going to be needed,” Rauscher said. All Orange & Rockland needs to do is email Sunrun when planners want the batteries shipped, and the company sends the virtual orders.

While email correspondence seems like a low-tech way to manage the smart grid of the future, Rauscher pointed out that this approach saves a lot of time and money compared to laborious integration with existing software controls. a public service. This makes particular sense for small-scale protests like this, or in places where long-term funding for a VPP is uncertain.

Virtual power plants in New York?

The solar and battery installations for the VPP demonstration will be completed by the end of the year. Orange & Rockland tracks battery response rates and measures their effects on reducing peak demand and deferring grid upgrades, and shares them with regulators on a quarterly basis. Next, utilities and regulators will determine how to develop this proof of concept.

This conversation will almost certainly come down to money, particularly how much it makes sense to spend to encourage battery adoption. The current program’s free battery makes it one of the most generous home battery incentives in the country. But a permanent, ongoing program would have to be funded collectively by utility customers, which requires a different calculus.

“We can’t give everyone a free battery,” Woods said. “It’s a cost-benefit analysis: what amount could get people interested, and as a public service we don’t completely lose our shirts?”

However, not all the money will need to come from the utility: New York is finalizing residential battery incentives as part of its energy storage roadmap, so dollars from the State will soon reduce part of the cost. And Sunrun already monetizes federal tax credits for solar and battery installations.

So far, VPP has demonstrated some fundamental principles: when customers receive a compelling invitation to participate, they choose to do so; When the utility calls for battery discharge during busy summer evenings, the batteries are up to the task.

These are things that Sunrun has already proven, on a much larger scale, in places like California And Puerto Rico. But Orange & Rockland’s involvement in New York State could make this format a tool to meet looming deadlines to clean up the state’s grid. This is all the more necessary because, after years of official encouragement and hundreds of millions of dollars spent, New York is still lagging behind its energy storage goals, which are essential to achieving the ambitions of the State in terms of renewable energies.

“Let’s stop talking, start acting: the virtual power plants are here,” Rauscher said. “Any utility in New York can implement a VPP.”