Participating homeowners will connect their home battery to the grid, sharing energy through Green Mountain Power’s distribution system in exchange for financial incentives.
The new era of the power grid may be characterized not by large power plants and sprawling transmission lines, but by local, flexible energy sources. Such is the vision explained in venture capitalist Bill Nussey’s Freeing Energy, who sees billion-dollar opportunities for innovators that can reconceive how energy is created, stored, and delivered. This new concept of the grid is already underway, and the latest example is the collaboration between Vermont utility Green Mountain Power, and microinverter and energy storage provider Enphase.
The two announced that Green Mountain Power will offer Enphase battery owners the opportunity to enroll in a grid services pilot program. Different than Green Mountain Power’s “Bring Your Own Device” program, which is a virtual power plant operation for battery owners, the new pilot program offers homeowners the opportunity to lease a battery, while still receiving monthly or upfront payments for participating in the program.
In the pilot, 100 eligible customers with two Enphase IQ Battery 10’s attached to their home solar system will be paid $65 a month for ten years or a single payment of $6,500 in exchange for sharing their stored energy with neighboring Green Mountain Power customers.
“This new battery backup leasing program makes getting an Enphase Energy System with its exceptional IQ Batteries an even easier decision for Vermont homeowners. With the new IQ8 microinverters, our customers will be able to easily expand their home battery system over time, giving them even more peace of mind about their energy future. This partnership allows the homeowners, local contractors, and utilities to use Enphase’s state of the art technology to help create a more reliable, affordable, and cleaner grid for all of Vermont.” Liam Madden, director of solar energy at HB Energy Solutions.
The Enphase batteries are lithium ferro-phosphate (LFP) chemistry batteries, which Enphase said provide a long life cycle and improved safety through thermal stability. They are equipped with a feature to seamlessly power up air conditioners and well pumps in the event of a grid power loss. The batteries come with a ten-year limited warranty with the ability to extend by an additional five years.
The lease pilot program joins Green Mountain Power’s other virtual power plant offering, the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) program. Under BYOD, owners of home energy storage systems of any eligible brand can receive an upfront payment of up to $9,500, depending on the capacity of the systems enrolled. Green Mountain Power said homeowners that retrofit an existing solar system in one of the areas of the state where battery power is needed most may be eligible to receive an extra $100 per kilowatt. Program participants will be enrolled for a term of a minimum of ten years.
Enphase is also launching its Grid Services Manager, a distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) that Green Mountain Power will use to manage the virtual power plants. Enphase said it plans to offer this software for utility grid managers and distributed energy resource aggregators in the future, playing a role in the new decentralized grid.
