Four California Community Choice Aggregators (CCA) – Peninsula Clean Energy (10 MW), Silicon Valley Clean Energy (10 MW), East Bay Community Energy (10 MW) and Silicon Valley Power (2.7 MW) (the four Load Serving Entities are collectively defined as LSEs), have put out a request for proposals (RFP) for purpose of installing at least 32.7 MW of energy storage across Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. The joint proposal (PDF) notes that the exact purpose of the RFP is twofold:
The LSEs seek to identify new and existing DER systems capable of providing capacity to satisfy RA requirements while also supporting the development of DERs to increase resilience in each service territory. The increasing threat of Pacific Gas and Electric Public Safety Power Shutoffs (PSPS) events has intensified the urgency and need for resilience region-wide. DERs deployed through this program will be capable of providing resiliency benefits to the LSEs’ customers and the broader community in advance of the 2020 and 2021 fire seasons.
The RFP, brought to this author’s attention by MicrogridKnowledge, was launched November 5, and had a webinar November 12th. Any questions should be sent to jross at ebce dot org by November 22, with final proposals due December 23, 2019. Developers must submit their proposals specifically to the CCA that they wish to build in, and are not required to submit any documentations to CCAs whose territories they aren’t building in. The CCAs have available one year of 15 minute interval data for sites within their territories upon request.
The unique RFPs can be found on each of the CCA’s websites:
- Peninsula Clean Energy
- Silicon Valley Clean Energy
- East Bay Community Energy
- Silicon Valley Power – (bid for this particular RFP not found, but it is supposed to be there)
The RFP notes that four specific system type are eligible, with one requirement of all of them being that the system is able to island the location in case of PSPS:
- New battery energy storage (BES) systems
- New combined solar photovoltaic (PV) + BES systems
- BES retrofits on existing PV systems
- Existing BES systems (provided that dispatchable capacity can be contracted by
the LSE and is not otherwise contracted)
Specifically, the bidding by developers must be submitted with a $/kWh-month because the base of this programs is a Resource Adequacy (RA) requirement that must be met by the utilities. Sunrun won a bid for RA using 20 MW of distributed residential solar+storage in the ISO New England territory for $3.80/kW/month – totaling $76,000/mo, and $912,000 for the full year contract. Those who accept these systems to be built at their locations will be given the total systems at a lower price in exchange for allowing the CCA to make use of these additional features for the broader grid utilization.
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In California, there is a ‘larger’ driving force to adopt one’s own solar PV and energy storage system. From a recent MSN news item about PG&Es bankruptcy case:
“Not everyone is willing to wait. State Senator Mike McGuire, a Democrat who represents the area where the Kincade fire burned 174 homes recently, is one of many lawmakers who have said the state should consider offering a “public option” for electricity. PG&E has already stumbled twice, he said on Monday, with a deadly 2010 gas explosion and several devastating fires in the last two years.
“I think we’re on our third strike,” Mr. McGuire said. “They’ve failed us too many times.”
He mentions the San Bruno gas line blowout in 2010. Recently in San Francisco a gas line burst in the street in San Francisco, the Lawmaker didn’t mention the criminal case against PG&E due to their practices that poisoned the ground water in Hinckley ,CA in the 1980’s and 1990’s.
Everyone in PG&E’s 70,000 mile sphere of influence is in danger and all need their own backup plan. I can’t see the very old and very young being able to “wait” 10 years for PG&E to “get their act together”.
Note that Silicon Valley Power is a municipal utility (vertical), while Silicon Valley Clean Energy, Peninsula Clean Energy and East Bay Community Energy are CCAs (municipally-governed competitive energy retailers with long-term planning responsibilities, which serve customers within their boundaries on an opt-out basis). Also, this solicitation follows on a smaller one issued by East Bay Community Energy earlier this year, under which Sunrun will provide 500 KW / 2 MWh of distributed storage (low-income single-family and multifamily homes across Alameda County).