ES Solar and sonnen find success in Wattsmart VPP program in Utah – pv magazine USA

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2 months ago

ES Solar says its objective is to retrofit 40% of all residential solar arrays in Utah with sonnen VPP batteries.

September 5, 2024 Anne Fischer

Rocky Mountain Power’s Wattsmart Battery Program, a utility model for selling grid-interactive solar and utility controlled residential batteries, is an alternative to solar “grid defection” or going off-grid and eliminates reliance on net metering.

Under the program, Utah ratepayers with existing solar installations can upgrade their system to include a grid interactive smart sonnen battery designed to harness solar and harmonize it with greater grid operation. The utility, RMP, offers Go Back incentives for a Wattsmart Battery, an annual bill credit for grid services, and proactive backup power.

ES Solar reports it has sold a18 MWh of sonnen retrofit energy storage systems via the Go Back initiative within the greater Wattsmart Program in Utah. ES Solar estimates that more than 75% of its 2024 sales are through the Go Back Program, resulting in between 200 and 500 sonnen battery installations in Utah each month.

ES Solar reports that RMP has directly integrated its specialized behind-the-meter battery VPP into its grid operating system without a distributed energy resources management system (DERMS) solution in the middle. And it does this while dispatching the battery fleet every day, deploying up to eight genuine grid services that are focused on electrochemical energy storage technology.

The RMP Wattsmart Distributed Battery Grid Management System (DBGMS) VPP has now grown to over 40 MWh of energy capacity, a substantial portion of which was sold by ES Solar. RMP customers who have installed solar prior to September 1, 2021 may qualify for an upfront incentive of $600/kW on their battery system by enrolling in Wattsmart, according to ESS. Comparatively, Wattsmart customers installing both new solar and a new battery may qualify for $400/kW.

“Existing solar customers are very interested in adding an intelligent energy storage system to their solar array, not just for backup power, but for the other benefits that a storage system can provide,” said Zach Randall, VP of sales at ES Solar.

In addition to their Go Back business, ES Solar reports experiencing a 95% battery attachment rate for new solar sales, with over 90% of these customers enrolling in the Wattsmart VPP. Following installation, these batteries are dispatched daily to carefully sculpt and flex PV generation and load.

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