AutoGrid to Manage 35 MWh of Residential Batteries as Virtual Power Plant in California
AutoGrid, the leader in flexibility management software for the energy industry, announced a strategic partnership with Swell Energy to provide software for managing Swell's growing fleet of distributed energy resources (DERs). Los Angeles-based Swell has built a pipeline of over 35 MWh of residential energy storage projects in California, which it is assembling into a virtual power plant to deliver grid services. Swell's virtual power plant will include more than 2,500 homes across California, making it the largest fleet of home batteries in North America providing grid services.
Swell offers batteries to homeowners as-a-service, and virtually combines the storage capacity across these batteries to provide energy and grid services to utilities. By monetizing the value from grid services, Swell reduces the cost of DERs for consumers, allows utilities to benefit from DERs on the grid and accelerates the adoption of clean energy technologies in a sustainable manner.
Through this partnership with AutoGrid, Swell is offering an end-to-end DER deployment and management solution to utilities, community choice aggregators (CCAs) and retail energy providers. By combining AutoGrid's flexibility management software with Swell's end-to-end finance, origination and fulfillment platform, Swell enables its partners to bundle electricity service with innovative energy storage, solar and smart home technology. Swell's energy products and services enable consumers to increase energy independence while lowering costs and greenhouse gas emissions. Additionally, these programs lower the overall cost of operating the grid by avoiding and deferring expensive infrastructure upgrades and reducing the need to purchase expensive peak power, in turn benefiting all electric consumers, including those who are not directly participating in these programs.
"Working with AutoGrid enables us to offer consumers a radically simple, cost-effective clean energy and smart home solution," said Andrew Meyer, head of grid services at Swell. "At the same time, we're able to provide our partner utilities with a turn-key DER platform and a single, optimized resource that can act as a virtual power plant for grid management and distribution deferral."
The AutoGrid Flex suite of flexibility management applications will provide Swell with a unified asset monitoring, management, co-optimization and reporting platform. The AutoGrid Distributed Energy Resources Management System (DERMS) module of the Flex platform will allow Swell to control not only behind-the-meter home batteries, but also connected digital devices, such as smart thermostats, and to lower electricity demand through voluntary customer efforts-so-called behavioral demand-response (DR) programs. The cloud-based, custom-branded platform allows Swell to work with energy providers to enroll customers, manage DR programs, dispatch DR events and measure and verify curtailment performance from a single, unified system.
Additionally, the AutoGrid Engage software module will provide Swell Energy with a portal to directly connect, communicate and collaborate with energy consumers. AutoGrid Flex software will enable Swell Energy to help its customers use less total energy, manage electricity bills through new time-of-use rates (TOU) in California, generate more renewable energy for themselves and to share on the grid, and increase reliability with a source of backup power. It will also help Swell's utility clients to manage the grid for better local system reliability and greenhouse gas reductions.
"A number of utilities are concerned about the impact of customer-sited distributed generation on their operations," said Dr. Amit Narayan, AutoGrid chief executive officer. "Working with Swell, utilities can turn these resources into grid assets, not only reducing carbon emissions but also improving resiliency for all customers."
Swell Energy | www.swellenergy.com
AutoGrid | www.auto-grid.com
