Residential solar firm Sunnova Energy International intends to deploy energy from its aggregated Adaptive Homes to meet peak capacity requirements in the low to moderate income (LMI) community within the Northern California service area of Pacific Gas and Electric Company.
PG&E identified areas which can benefit from distributed energy resource deployments. It will help avoid or defer traditional electric distribution system upgrades and predict load growth in a service territory.
As per PG&E’s Distribution Resource Plan, the targeted areas of distribution system will require additional capacity only for a handful of hours each year and Sunnova’s distributed assets will be sufficient to meet that capacity.
Sunnova’s solar + storage systems will defer the need for the utility to upgrade its distribution infrastructure at some sub-stations and extend the useful life of the grid.
“Our virtual power plant capabilities can be leveraged through a targeted approach to relieve grid stress in focused areas during specific event windows within PG&E’s service area,” said McCrea Dunton, Senior Director, Energy and Grid Services at Sunnova. “Sunnova is proud to work with PG&E on one of its first deployments of behind the meter (BTM) battery storage systems as a non-wires alternative that provides our customers with increased energy resiliency.”
Since 2018, when the Distribution Investment Deferral Framework was established, the California Public Utilities Commission approved more than 34 MWs of battery storage contracts for IOUs and 16MW was awarded in the PG&E service area. In the last five years, half of the 530 MWs worth of battery storage systems deployed in the California residential market were installed in the PG&E service area.
