By Sean Wolfe | Renewable Energy World

The California Energy Commission (CEC) approved a new program that would tap into thousands of distributed solar-charged and standalone batteries located at homes and businesses throughout the state to meet the state’s growing electricity needs, particularly on hot summer evenings.

The concept is sometimes called a “virtual power plant,” and it is now featured in part of the CEC’s Demand Side Grid Support program. The program would allow fleets of customer-sited batteries to be remotely dispatched when demand for electricity is at its highest, the grid most stressed, and energy prices are rising. Bringing fleets of batteries online during these high-price events is meant to help respond to grid emergencies, avoid power outages, help lower prices for ratepayers, and ultimately avoid grid emergencies in the first place.

Approximately 100,000 solar-charged batteries are currently installed at businesses and homes throughout the state. These batteries have a combined capacity of approximately 1 GW of power, which is the size of one nuclear reactor. Unlike a traditional power plant, these batteries are extremely nimble, with the ability to respond in an instant when energy is needed.

The program adopted is an early step toward a future electric system that could ultimately draw on millions of distributed batteries to support the grid, communities, and residents. The battery virtual power plant pathway was proposed by the California Solar and Storage Association as a way for the state to take advantage of the many strengths of customer-sited energy storage.

The challenge for the state is to get more consumers investing in these batteries and to create programs and incentives to allow energy providers to tap into them during the small number of hours each year when the grid is most stressed, the California Solar and Storage Association said.

The CEC passed guidelines for this program with a unanimous vote of three commissioners at its July 26 business meeting in Sacramento. With the passage of the new guidelines, Demand Side Grid Support providers — including companies that operate virtual power plants composed of customer batteries — are expected to enroll in the program and begin signing up customers as early as this summer.