New Zealand company Solarcity is planning to connect 3000 homes that already have solar panels and storage batteries to the national grid.
Solarcity, which no connection to the Tesla subsidiary with the same name, says the network will be the world’s largest virtual power plant. If all its customers were to participate it said their batteries would be able to store 18.6MWh of electrical energy. However the company has been reported saying it plans to increase the number to 50,000 over the next year.
Power from participants will be fed to transmission network operator Transpower as part of its Demand Response program designed to reduce demand peaks.
Transpower explains it as follows
“We give you several hours of advanced notice of an upcoming event via our demand response mobile app, and together we come to an agreed price and a kW amount you can respond with for the event. Once agreed, it’s over to you how you reduce your demand in a few hours’ time. This could be by: using standby generators; turning off some of your load; using batteries or other alternative energy sources.
Participants in Solarcity’s scheme will also be able to store electrical energy from Transpower in their batteries and be paid to do so.
The scheme was announced by climate change minister James Shaw who was reported saying,”This comes at zero up front cost. It’s like a leasing scheme, so you’re not actually paying to install the system on your roof.
“You’re participating in a virtual power plant and you get the benefit of that in the form of reduced household electricity bills. If Transpower needs to use a bit of your battery as backup then you get paid for that as well.”
Transpower CEO Alison Andrew said Solarcity’s initiative would represent the first large-scale inclusion of battery systems into the Demand Response program. “This is beneficial because consumers can have more control over their energy use and when they use it,” he said. “The more people who participate, the more we can reduce the overall peak demand on the grid.”
Solarcity has released a white paper titled ‘solarZero, Streaming the Sun – A New Grid for Good’that “explains how solar and battery storage are going to help New Zealand meet its climate change goals while saving the nation billions of dollars in trying to fix and upgrade the current electricity system.”
