Morning Brief: Sunrun launches residential energy storage virtual power plant, Panasonic expands its panel warranty

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Sunrun has partnered with Southern California Edison (SCE) to launch one of the first residential energy storage virtual power plants in operation in the United States. To do this, Sunrun and SCE will network up to 300 Brightbox solar and battery systems across Southern California to demonstrate how clean energy can provide peaking capacity to the electrical grid for Southern California residents. The program will begin later this month, and is expected to run until mid-2021. Homeowners will earn an incentive for participating in the program, and Sunrun will manage and dispatch the networked energy to the grid when SCE calls an event to meet local grid operational requirements. Source: Sunrun

Panasonic expanded its 25-year warranty on solar panels to include labor on all components of the residential solar system, including the monitoring and interconnection hardware and racking system. Under the new warranty, Panasonic will alleviate the labor costs associated with servicing valid warranty claims for the solar panel and hardware components installed with a Panasonic AC module such as the Enphase microinverter, communication gateway, combiner and Unirac racking system. Source: Panasonic

Verizon is back at the bottom of Green America’s Clean Energy Wireless Scorecard that grades the top U.S. telecommunications companies on their renewable energy usage, with only 3% to 5% estimated clean energy use.  According to the updated “Clean Energy is Calling” report, T-Mobile leads the industry through its commitment to reach 100% renewables by 2021. Second-place Sprint announced a goal of 100% clean energy by 2025. Source: Green America

Solar United Neighbors and Vote Solar have submitted over 20,000 public comments in support of states’ rights to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) yesterday, marking the close of the public comment period in Docket EL20-42. Specifically the comments regard the New England Ratepayers Association’s ongoing attack on net metering nationwide. Included in the 20,000 comments from citizens of all 50 states and the District of Columbia, Public Utilities Commissions, Governors, state Attorney Generals and other public officials. Solar United Neighbors and Vote Solar submitted nearly 9,000 comments from solar owners, more than 2,000 from workers and 331 from solar business owners. Source: Vote Solar

The Platte River Power Authority in Colorado announced that its 280 MW Rawhide Unit 1 coal plant will cease producing electricity by 2030, 16 years before its planned retirement date. Construction to build Rawhide Unit 1, on ground northwest of Wellington, Colorado began in 1979 and commercial operations started in 1984. Source: PRPA

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