Green Mountain Power pilots blockchain-driven solar for low and moderate income customers

Vermont power distribution company Green Mountain Power is piloting LO3 Energy’s Pando local energy marketplace platform.

Green Mountain Power’s ‘Sun Match’ pilot is aimed to enable low and middle-income customers to benefit from solar power without them having to build their own systems.

With solar power from an existing array, the pilot will offer up to 500 eligible customers the opportunity to sign up for a new solar rate, designed to encourage energy use at times when solar is plentiful.

Over the course of a year, the average customer in the programme is expected to save about $150, or even more if additional energy use is shifted to the daytime hours when there is a lot of solar.

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The savings will appear as a bill credit and customers can opt out at any time.

“This pilot programme is an exciting way to offer savings to income eligible customers tied to clean, locally produced power, at the time it is being produced,” said Josh Castonguay, vice president and chief innovation officer at Green Mountain Power.

“This pilot will help us learn what works best for customers to tie their usage to generation and ensure it is a seamless experience.”

Customers who enrol in the pilot will have access to a mobile app that gives a forecast of solar energy one to three days ahead to highlight opportunities to save and displays their energy use history and a summary of their savings.

In addition, it offers suggestions on how customers can shift their energy use to save more money and take better advantage of renewable resources.

For the utility, Pando provides a comprehensive web dashboard that displays information such as how many customers are enrolled in their renewable programmes, the participating customer usage charted against renewable energy availability and the effectiveness of alerts to inspire customers to shift their energy use to match renewable availability as well as the overall savings for participating customers.

Green Mountain Power serves approximately 270,000 residential and business customers in Vermont. The utility also has just been named to TIME’s list of the world’s 100 Most Influential Companies, selected for its pioneering grid transformation work including large-scale projects and home battery storage programmes that provide power to customers during outages.