Sunrun is connecting a 17 MW digital energy plant (VPP) in Puerto Rico to assist rebuild and rework the island’s vitality system. This VPP, consisting of greater than 7,000 Sunrun dwelling solar-plus-battery techniques would be the first distributed large-scale storage program on the island.
VPPs are nice for decreasing vitality prices for all shoppers, offering onsite backup, decreasing air pollution and, perhaps most significantly right here, hardening a fragile grid with dependable, small-scale techniques.
Sunrun will spend the subsequent 12 months enrolling clients into this system and start networked dispatches in 2024. Along with having onsite backup and self-consumption advantages, clients will likely be compensated in alternate for strategically sharing their saved vitality with Puerto Rico’s energy grid. All clients with batteries are additionally eligible to enroll and might decide out at any level throughout the 10-year program.
VPP expertise allows utilities to name upon distributed assets for clear vitality capability as a substitute of peaker crops, which in flip saves all grid-connected clients cash by slicing again on fossil gas consumption and centralized grid infrastructure investments.
“Puerto Ricans are able to make the transfer to dependable impartial clear vitality options that can improve their sense of security and safety in their very own properties,” stated Sunrun CEO Mary Powell. “We’re fixing vitality insecurity on the island by switching the mannequin in order that photo voltaic vitality is generated on rooftops and saved in batteries to energy every dwelling, after which shared with neighbors, making a clear shared vitality economic system.”
Earlier this fall, Hurricane Fiona knocked out the island’s energy grid, leaving greater than three million residents in the dead of night. Sunrun clients on the island have been in a position to energy by the prolonged outages. Sunrun solar-plus-battery techniques supplied greater than 350,000 hours of backup energy to 1000’s of properties.
Powell additionally provides a shout out Sunrun’s channel companions in Puerto Rico, who’ve “endured by so many climatic occasions but proceed to assist Sunrun ship vitality independence and peace of thoughts to 1000’s of Puerto Rican households,” in addition to Governor Pierluisi, the legislature, the Puerto Rico Vitality Bureau and the Photo voltaic and Vitality Storage Affiliation of Puerto Rico. The U.S. Division of Vitality additionally supplied technical help to the rebuilding effort.
In 2019, two years after Hurricane Maria dismantled the island’s electrical grid, the Puerto Rico Vitality Public Coverage Act was handed by the Legislature to set the parameters for a forward-looking vitality system that maximizes distributed technology. The Puerto Rico Vitality Bureau (PREB) decided that VPPs have been key to attaining the laws’s targets of constructing a resilient and strong vitality system and assembly Puerto Rico’s renewable portfolio requirements.
That is simply the newest in an extended line of Sunrun VPPs, together with the primary wholesale market VPP within the nation. This summer time in California and New England, Sunrun’s VPPs supplied 1.1 and 1.8 gigawatt-hours of vitality to native grids throughout excessive climate situations, serving to utility suppliers meet peak electrical energy demand and stave off energy outages.
The Governing Board of the Puerto Rico Electrical Energy Authority accepted the phrases of the settlement on October 26, 2022, and the settlement is topic to regulatory sign-off by the Puerto Rico Vitality Bureau and the Fiscal Oversight Administration Board.
Source link
