Sunrun Partners with PG&E on Virtual Power Plant Deployment
Image courtesy of Brian Kusler under Attribution 2.0 Generic License, resized to 700 x 391 pixels.
Sunrun, a solar and battery storage provider, recently announced that it will be building a 30-MW virtual power plant in PG&E’s California footprint. The initiative stems from California’s 2021 mandate for utilities and energy companies to build solutions to reduce electricity demand during periods when the grid is stressed.
How the Sunrun / PG&E Virtual Power Plant Will Work
The virtual power plant was approved in January 2023 and Sunrun expects it to be fully operational by August 2023. It is expected to be able to handle 7,500 customers, making it a much larger project than the company’s other similar programs which typically handle 500-2,000 customers.
It will work as a 2-way hub to give and take power from residential solar panels. Specifically, solar power produced by customers’ panels during the day will be absorbed, and then discharged back to the grid after the sun has set during the summer months.
The summer-month timeframe is critical, as most of PG&E’s well-publicized reliability issues have occurred during the summer months. Contributing factors have included increased demand, the changing climate that has facilitated megadroughts as well as massive forest fires, and the impending shift to renewable energy sources.
One of the attractive features of the virtual power plant is that achieving the customer-to-utility interconnection should be relatively easy. Sunrun says that the technology will “piggyback on the interconnection process that customers are already doing to put solar on their roofs, and pair that solar with batteries.”
Sunrun and PG&E are highly confident that the technology will be efficient and effective. The main unknown is customer receptivity to participating. Sunrun is hoping that this virtual power plant will affirm that customers are indeed ready to participate. The company is also hoping the project lowers energy costs, reduces system stress, and decreases reliance on fossil fuels.
Here’s hoping that PG&E and Sunrun hit this one out of the park!
