Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Largest Virtual Power Plant in USA Supports California’s Grid with 16,200 Home Solar-Plus-Storage Systems

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Sunrun creates the nation’s largest digital energy plant to take part in statewide program designed to strengthen California’s careworn electrical grid and cut back blackouts by offering load era throughout excessive occasions

Sunrun (Nasdaq: RUN), the nation’s main supplier of fresh vitality as a subscription service, has networked greater than 16,200 clients’ solar-plus-storage programs to help California’s electrical grid in the course of the sizzling summer season months. Sunrun’s CalReady energy plant will cut back pressure on the grid by supplying important vitality to communities that want it all through California in an effort to cut back prices and assist forestall energy emergencies.

For the second yr in a row, Sunrun is demonstrating how uniquely succesful, dependable and available its solar-plus-storage programs are as an important grid resolution. In the summertime of 2023, Sunrun’s Peak Energy Rewards program equipped Pacific Gasoline and Electrical Firm (PG&E) as much as 32 megawatts of energy throughout night peak hours from 8,500 clients’ batteries. This summer season, Sunrun is anticipated to roughly double that capability and participant quantity for the statewide Demand Facet Grid Help program.

“We are on the forefront of a customer-led revolution to a cleaner, more affordable clean energy future. When presented with the opportunity to help, Sunrun’s customers always step up to be part of the solution,” stated Sunrun CEO Mary Powell. “By sharing their clean solar power, they are making California’s grid more resilient for everyone. Sunrun’s CalReady is far and away the largest virtual power plant in the country and serves as a model for what the electric grid of the future should look like.”

Designed and administered by the California Power Fee, the Demand Facet Grid Help program is a part of California’s Strategic Reliability Reserve which goals to spice up vitality provides throughout warmth waves, wildfires and different excessive occasions. Because the tens of 1000’s of enrolled batteries from aggregators stabilize the grid, the danger of rolling blackouts is lowered.

As the most important aggregator within the Demand Facet Grid Help program, Sunrun will monitor and dispatch its clients’ enrolled batteries, making it a hassle-free expertise. Sunrun clients enrolled in CalReady will likely be compensated for sharing their saved photo voltaic vitality with the grid and Sunrun will likely be paid for dispatching the batteries.

“A Sunrun customer’s battery just got more rewarding in California,” Powell stated. “A typical customer won’t even notice that they’re sharing their stored power to bolster the grid while getting compensated for doing so. As a storage-first company, we are all about stacking benefits to provide the most value to our customers, communities and grid partners.”

CalReady will likely be obtainable to help California’s grid every day from 4 to 9 p.m. from Could by means of October—the time of day and season when there may be the best demand for vitality and the grid is most susceptible to outages. Sunrun clients’ batteries will nonetheless retain, at minimal, a backup reserve of 20% in order that they will proceed to energy their houses within the occasion of an area energy outage.

“The benefit of Sunrun’s fleet of many thousand batteries is that they can be orchestrated in unison. It’s the scale, speed and capacity that makes Sunrun’s virtual power plants so valuable,” stated Chris Rauscher, Sunrun’s Head of Grid Companies. “Just like how a centralized fossil fuel power plant is controlled and dispatched by a single entity, so too is Sunrun’s CalReady virtual power plant—making it a powerful contributor to California’s grid. Because CalReady is a distributed resource spread across households statewide, it’s more resilient and adaptable when compared to a physical power plant.”

Through the 5 months of this system, the California Power Fee may name upon Sunrun’s enrolled solar-plus-storage programs as much as 35 occasions to provide supplemental vitality to the grid and the communities that it helps. Enrollment in Sunrun’s CalReady is ongoing and, with buyer outreach persevering with, participation is anticipated to develop.

About Sunrun

Sunrun Inc. (Nasdaq: RUN) revolutionized the photo voltaic trade in 2007 by eradicating monetary obstacles and democratizing entry to locally-generated, renewable vitality. In the present day, Sunrun is the nation’s main supplier of fresh vitality as a subscription service, providing residential photo voltaic and storage with no upfront prices. Sunrun’s progressive merchandise and options can join houses to the cleanest vitality on earth, offering them with vitality safety, predictability, and peace of thoughts. Sunrun additionally manages vitality companies that profit communities, utilities, and the electrical grid whereas enhancing buyer worth. Uncover extra at www.sunrun.com

Press launch from Sunrun


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