Two power companies are teaming up to offer more than 300 New York homeowners across Brooklyn and Queens ‘solar power systems’ with battery storage. This new $15 million ‘virtual power plant’ will provide the power companies, and residents, a backup in case of an outage.
Under New York State’s Reforming the Energy Vision (REV), Con Edison (ConEd) and SunPower Corps. (SPC) have partnered and are offering certain homes the option to lease a SunPower solar system along with a Sunverge Energy battery system, which would help keep appliances running using stored solar power during the next outage.
Using the Sunverge storage systems computers, ConEd will be able to link the 300+ homes into a ‘virtual power plant‘ that can act as local storage and help supply power during peak energy use or an outage. It can “control a fleet of devices on the grid in near real-time,” CEO of Sunverge, Ken Munson told greentechmedia.com in an interview published Sunday.
The REV policy initiative has a stated goal to ‘create a cleaner, more affordable, more modern and more efficient energy system in New York, through the increased development of distributed energy resources, like rooftop solar, energy efficiency, and battery storage’.
“This ambitious program with Con Edison represents a significant milestone in U.S. energy delivery,” said SunPower president Howard Wenger in an interview with prnewswire.com. “Demonstrating that combining solar and energy storage can result in a stronger, more resilient grid while providing end customers the opportunity to save on electricity bills.”
The partnership between ConEd, SPC and Sunverge Energy is the largest residential distributed energy storage program in the U.S.. There has been an increase in solar power nationally, but one issue plaguing solar was that of storage. With Sunverge’s battery system, not only has personal storage been addressed, but so has the ability to link the battery to a grid and give power where it is needed; whether that is at your own home during an outage, or somewhere else during peak usage.
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