In California, 300 low-income households will be outfitted with rooftop solar and energy storage and joined in a virtual power plant (VPP) network, reducing costs both for the homeowners and system operators.
Clean Power Alliance (CPA), the largest community choice aggregator (CCA) in the state, has tapped Haven Energy to install, operate, and maintain solar and storage systems for 300 single-family homes in its service area, installing the system at no cost to the customer.
Haven will use a combination of federal tax credits and the state’s recently updated Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) to fund the installations.
Under the program, Haven Energy owns the installed system, collects the tax credits, and SGIP rebate, and the solar-plus-battery is installed for the customer at no cost. The customer then gets to take in all the benefits of the solar-plus-battery installation.
“For most homeowners, we’re seeing an 80% to 90% reduction in their electric bill,” Vinnie Campo, chief executive officer, Haven Energy told pv magazine USA.
Power outages and electricity bill prices are both on the rise in the state, with prices increasing 20% to 30% or more in the last few years, said Campo. Statewide debt on unpaid electricity bills reached nearly $3 billion by 2023, and roughly 25% of the state’s ratepayers experience energy insecurity, or the inability to afford household energy needs. This income-qualified program seeks to address these issues while also supporting communities that suffer from increased power outages.
“Income-qualified homeowners that have really seen a lot of power price increases and have really felt it are now going to get relief on both the power but also are going to get the benefits of backup power,” said Campo.
The SGIP program has existed in the state in different forms for about ten years, designed to bring more energy storage to California’s grid to support backup power and enhance grid flexibility. A new program under SGIP was adopted this year, supporting both solar and storage for income-qualified customers.
Campo said the biggest change to SGIP is that it is no longer ratepayer funded. Over its history the program has reached almost $1 billion in deployment and was largely funded by increases in customer bills. Now, the program is funded by the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) that the California Energy Commission received from the federal government. The nearly $300 million awarded to California under GGRF is largely directed toward low-income households, said Campo.
Customers who are eligible for California Alternative Rate Energy Program (CARE) or Family Rate Reduction Program (FERA) can apply for the program facilitated by Haven Energy launching this Spring.
CPA said the average system will provide participating customers with 5kW of solar photovoltaic power generation and 20 kWh of battery storage. Haven currently installs batteries provided by Tesla, FranklinWH and Enhpase, and solar panels manufactured by Qcells and REC.
The VPP-enrolled solar-plus-batteries will maintain a minimum of 20% reserve for backup power to the home. The batteries will also participate in dispatching power to CPA’s grid, providing 4.8 MWh of flexible power, serving power during peak demand periods. This is estimated to save CPA more than $380k in resource adequacy costs over the first three years of the program.
Programs like this partnership between CPA and Haven may mark just the tip of the iceberg for distributed energy resources (DER) to cut costs for both ratepayers and grid operators. Campo noted that implementation of FERC Order 2222, which facilitates the implementation of DER into wholesale electricity markets, could open the door for widespread adoption of distributed solar-plus-batteries, leading to a most cost-effective and extreme weather resilient power grid.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.