Solar storage project connects neighbours
Twenty homes in Richmond Hill equipped with solar panels and bookshelf-sized battery systems could be the future of power generation and storage.
thestar.com
Sept. 18, 2015
By Tyler Hamilton
Calling your home a power plant because a few solar panels have been slapped on the roof is a bit of a stretch.
But what if your home also had a way to store that solar energy and was connected to tens, hundreds, even thousands of other homes in a community?
What if your local electric utility could manage how that collection of houses deploys the power they generate and store?
You’d have, in essence, a virtual power plant - part of what visionaries like Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk call the “Internet of energy.”
It’s a future that Neetika Sathe, vice-president of smart grid technologies at PowerStream, is starting to build today.
Ontario’s second-largest municipally owned electric utility launched a pilot project this week that will see 20 residential properties in and around Richmond Hill equipped with solar panels and bookshelf-sized battery systems.
Those home systems will be networked together like computers in an office, allowing PowerStream to control all 20 as if they were a single system - a zero-emission neighbourhood power plant.
“We are the first to do this in Canada,” said Sathe, who has plans of eventually opening up the project to PowerStream’s 375,000 customers spread across 15 communities, including Markham, Vaughan and Barrie. The utility will be marketing the program under the name PowerHouse.
For participating customers, it offers the potential for lower hydro bills and never knowing when short-term power outages occur in their neighbourhood, as the battery system provides reliable backup. A handy mobile app tells homeowners when their system is generating solar power and the charge status of the battery.
PowerStream benefits by having control over all battery systems and being able to decide how and when that stored energy can be used to support the local grid.
“If we have a storm alert and know there’s a chance of trees falling on wires, with the click of a button we can tell all these battery systems to charge up because we may need them for backup later,” said Sathe.
Having previously worked at Nissan Canada where she was responsible for launching the company’s Leaf electric vehicle, Sathe said it was difficult to go back to promoting gas-burning models. She decided it was time to move on. “I no longer have gasoline in my blood. I now have electrons in my veins.”
The battery systems are being supplied by San Francisco-based Sunverge, which is also providing the software that will allow PowerStream to intelligently tie all the systems together.
Ken Munson, chief executive officer of Sunverge, said the software does more than just monitor and control solar panels and batteries. It can also manage the home charging of electric vehicles and the operation of smart thermostats and other devices that are becoming part of the automated home.
Munson credits Musk’s high-profile launch of the Tesla Powerwall battery in May for creating excitement around the possibilities of using energy storage in homes and business.
“We’ve seen a global up-swell as a result of them, so that’s good for us,” Munson said.
How PowerHouse Works
- Customers wanting to sign up pay an upfront cost (not yet determined) for installation of the system and a nominal monthly service fee. They agree to be part of the program for five years. PowerStream installs, owns, maintains and operates the solar-storage system. Because the solar will partially offset the electricity requirements of the home, customers benefit from lower monthly power bills - enough, ideally, to recoup the initial upfront cost and monthly service fee.
- The more homes and businesses that sign up, the greater the benefit to the operations of the local power grid - a true case of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Using the Sunverge software, PowerStream can remotely control the battery systems scattered across its service territory. In essence, these systems become a highly flexible source of power that can be called into service on demand without homeowners even knowing.
- What it amounts to is the creation of a virtual power plant that can grow or shrink as required. About 100,000 homes and businesses equipped with the PowerHouse system would be equivalent to a coal-fired power station of average size operating several hours a day - but with zero pollution or greenhouse gas emissions.
When more electric vehicles begin plugging into homes, it will add even more energy storage potential to the mix. This is what experts think about when they use the term “smart grid.” The Internet of energy is just getting started and is a key component of the transition to a low-carbon economy.
The Musk Effect
- PowerStream says its PowerHouse program could be a good fit for Tesla Motor’s Powerwall home battery system, which was launched by Tesla chief Elon Musk in May and within a week had attracted more than $800 million in orders. The two companies are talking. Musk says there’s no reason we can’t get all our electricity from renewable energy.
- The cost and growth of energy storage is following a similar path as solar. A recent study in the Journal Nature Climate Change found that lithium-ion battery costs have fallen by more than two-thirds since 2007 with the rate of reduction expected to continue. This has led Germany’s Deutsche Bank to recently predict “mass adoption potential before 2020.” Tesla’s $5-billion (U.S.) Gigafactory, being built in Nevada, is expected to start churning out powerful, low-cost battery cells by 2017. It’s the first of many gigafactories expected to drive down costs and improve battery performance.
- Tesla isn’t the only one going after the home energy storage market, which is expected to be worth $19 billion globally by 2017. Panasonic, Samsung, and LG Chem are among the giants also in the space. Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore, speaking recently at an event in Toronto, called solar and storage a powerful combination.
