Sunrun, a leading U.S. installer of residential solar and energy storage, is operating the nation’s first residential vehicle-to-grid program in partnership with Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE).
The pilot program enrolls a network of Ford Lightning electric trucks in a grid program in which the truck batteries dispatch stored electricity back to the local distribution grid during times of peak electricity demand in the summer and fall.
Using bidirectional EV chargers, owners of Ford Lightning trucks can charge and discharge power from their batteries.
“By sharing stored energy with the grid when it is needed most, these vehicles make our energy system more reliable, more efficient, and even help lower electricity costs for customers,” said Divest Gupta, director of clean energy solutions, BGE.
Starting in July, the enrolled F-150 lightning trucks dispatched energy to the grid between the hours of 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays, earning participating customers a payment based on the amount of energy shared, up to a maximum of $1,000 for the dispatching season that goes through the end of September.
“I bought the Ford F-150 Lightning for several reasons, one of them being the ability to power our home during an outage. Now, I can also earn money by sending energy directly to the grid,” said Balitmore resident Morgan Grove.
The small pilot program has three customer participants, but it marks a first for the nation.
“This demonstrates the critical role that vehicle batteries can play in powering the nation’s grid, accelerating American energy independence and dominance,” said Sunrun CEO Mary Powell. “In addition to showing how electric vehicles can power homes, add electrons to the grid, and help utilities meet peak electricity demand, this program also creates extra income opportunities for customers.”
Sunrun has an existing partnership with Ford to serve as installer of the Ford Home Backup Power, which includes the Ford Charge Station Pro EV charger and the co-developed Home Integration System, which together comprise the first commercially available bidirectional system in the U.S.
Sunrun and other businesses already administer networks of solar-connected home battery energy storage systems across the U.S., facilitating flexible grid operation via virtual power plants. Sunrun said it has over 150,000 home batteries installed in the U.S., highlighting a fleet of distributed resources that can dynamically meet the needs of the distribution grid.
Vehicle-to-grid programs show promise in the sheer capacity of storage that can be unlocked. While a home battery often ranges 10 kWh to 15 kWh, the Ford Lightning battery is roughly ten times larger, packing in 98 kWh to 131 kWh.
Research from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory said that even with low participation rates of 12% to 43% the vehicle-to-grid market could represent technical capacity of 32 TWh to 62 TWh globally by 2050. This is significantly higher than the 3.4 TWh to 19.2 TWh of storage modeled to be required by 2050 by the International Renewable Energy Agency in order to meet a net-zero emissions energy system.
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