Tesla and Sunrun partner on customer-driven power plant in Texas

Mere weeks removed from the havoc stirred up by Hurricane Beryl, which knocked out power for roughly three million homes and businesses, Sunrun is expanding its support of the Texas grid.

Virtual power plant pioneer Sunrun has announced a partnership with Tesla Electric, a retail electricity provider operated by Tesla Energy Ventures LLC (a subsidiary of Tesla, Inc.) in an aggregated power programme.

More than 150 Sunrun customers have already enrolled in the customer-driven power plant, which dispatches stored solar energy from at-home batteries to increase available electricity reserves on the grid during periods of high consumption.

“Texas grid has already experienced a traumatic spring and summer due to weather vulnerabilities and we know the state also needs more power to meet soaring demand on a daily basis. We’re eager to bring Sunrun’s on-demand battery response expertise to help make the grid more resilient against outages,” said Sunrun CEO Mary Powell.

“Texas families are increasingly opting to add batteries to their solar installations. On-site energy storage not only provides homeowners peace of mind with outage protection but also enables them to participate in programs like these by contributing to solutions that better the lives of those in their communities.”

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This marks Sunrun’s first operational virtual power plant program in Texas; the company says it already has plans to scale up enrollments. Sunrun customers with solar panels combined with a Tesla Powerwall battery are eligible to participate once they choose Tesla Electric as their electricity provider.

In addition to the benefits provided by peace of mind and greater control over their energy, customers will be compensated for their participation via yearly payments, currently calculated at $400 per Powerwall for 2024 participation. Enrollees will also retain a portion of the stored energy in their batteries to provide backup power to their homes in the event of an outage. Sunrun will earn incremental recurring revenue for the programme.

Texans vividly remember the devastation caused by Winter Storm Uri in February 2021. The storm claimed more than 240 lives and cost Texans more than $50 billion in terms of electricity going through the real-time market. Since Uri, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state’s grid operator, has begun adopting ways to diversify and strengthen the power grid, including through the Aggregated Distributed Energy Resources Task Force.

Sunrun customers who enroll will be participating in ERCOT’s Aggregated Distributed Energy Resources pilot programme, aimed at strengthening grid reliability by networking together customer-sited storage devices to serve as a resource for the wholesale electricity market. Powerwall batteries will also help to lower the costs of energy at the wholesale level, contends Sunrun, and the savings will be shared with customers. Tesla Electric is one of Sunrun’s preferred Retail Electricity Providers for Sunrun customers in Texas because of its attractive rate structures and ability to participate in this power plant programme.

Sunrun currently operates more than a dozen power plants across the country, including the largest single-owner virtual power plant programme, CalReady. The virtual power plant was activated to support California’s power grid during a recent heat wave, in which batteries from more than 16,000 Sunrun customers’ solar-plus-storage systems dispatched power for four consecutive evenings from July 9-12 during peak hours. Those batteries supplied the grid with an average of 48 megawatts each night, enough to power up to 48,000 homes — a city the size of Santa Monica — and peaked at 51 megawatts, exceeding the capacity of several costly and polluting gas-fired peaker plants in California.

Last month, in partnership with Maryland’s largest utility, Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE), Sunrun debuted the first bidirectional EV power plant pilot programme in the United States tapping into customer-owned rides.

The regulator-approved initiative will include SunRun customers in BGE’s service territory who own an F-150 Lightning truck paired with Ford Charge Station Pro and Home Integration System, sold exclusively through Sunrun. This summer, power from those trucks will be delivered to owners’ homes during peak demand to support Maryland’s power grid.

Originally published by Paul Gerke on Renewable Energy World.