Utilities like our own Peninsula Light Co. are in a fix. As consumers, we want our utilities to provide clean, reliable power, even as periods of peak demand become more frequent. Utilities all over the U.S. know they need to find new sources of power. Is it a surprise that utilities are turning to us, the end users, for a solution?
Demand is rising for the usual reasons: there are more of us consumers all the time; we’re buying big electric appliances like stoves and heat pumps; yard tools with batteries are replacing tools with gas engines; new computing centers and bitcoin sites are clamoring for more power; and we also want our utilities to fix the grid, whether it’s broken by one fallen tree, or an entire city is in the dark after a hurricane. We also want to charge up that computer on wheels with a battery: the electric vehicle.
Our neighboring utility, Puget Sound Energy, has a program called “Flex Rewards” to encourage customers who heat or cool with electricity to turn off big appliances to conserve power when demand is high. That’s an indicator of a temporizing action, not a long-term solution.
The solution that thrills utilities is that customers are installing big batteries in their homes. To a utility, home batteries are an emergent resource that could be shared.
Utilities like the idea of a network of friendly batteries so much that they are teaming up with solar panel installers to encourage even more battery installations. In rural suburban areas northwest of New York City, Sunrun, a solar panel installation company, is working with the local utility Orange & Rockland, which serves some 300,000 customers, to offer households a free LG Chem battery pack, or a heavily discounted Tesla Powerwall when they buy a system from Sunrun.
Orange & Rockland is keenly aware that this program is establishing a network of more than 300 solar-powered homes that, when necessary, could supplement their grid during periods of peak demand.
In California, Sunrun has partnered with GRID Alternatives, a nonprofit, to give a free battery system to low-income customers who live in wildfire-prone regions. Utilities get the homeowner’s prior permission to take power from the battery at times of peak demand. After the utility calls for power, the battery is not completely discharged, and the utility pays the owner for the power it uses.
Users like being in control. They realize that storing energy in a home battery backs up their power or lets them charge a car or avoid time-of-day peak utility rates. Batteries let people save power from intermittent renewable sources and use utility power only when needed. Advanced controls on the battery let a homeowner decide where the energy to charge the battery comes from (the grid, the car, or a renewable source) and where it should go (the car, back to the grid, or stay in the battery).
Bidirectional switching means the electric vehicle can be charged from the home battery or the battery in the car can send power to the home battery or to the house. A system sold by General Motors now does all this. It includes a bidirectional EV charger, an AC-DC inverter, a load-managing computer control system, a big battery (17.7 kilowatt hours), and a small battery to operate the computer as the system starts. I am tempted to get such a system.
Orange & Rockland’s program to place more batteries in the homes of ratepayers represents a distributed energy resource that will strengthen the utility’s performance. To Orange & Rockland, those 300 homes represent a small virtual power plant.
European utilities are also aware that storing renewable energy in electric vehicle batteries and releasing it back to the grid when needed represents a rather large, decentralized energy storage resource that could save a great deal of money. A study by the European Federation for Transport and Environment found that a program to recruit electric vehicle batteries into a bidirectional network could save the European Union billions of euros over 10 years compared with building a stationary energy storage facility. The study predicts that electric vehicles may grow to become the fourth-largest electricity supplier in the EU by 2040.
We have solar panels at our house that generate about one-third of our electricity over the course of a year. During June through August, the panels generate 40 to 50 kilowatt hours of electricity each clear day. This is several times our daily use during the summer and the power we don’t use goes into the grid. In exchange, PenLight gives us a modest rebate. We would get even more value if we stored some of the extra energy in a home battery and used that to charge an electric car.
We’re living in the age of electricity. Batteries are not just for flashlights, cell phones and hearing aids anymore.
Richard Gelinas, Ph.D., whose early work earned a Nobel prize, lives in Lakebay.
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