Photo: Green Mountain Power

Vermont-based energy provider Green Mountain Power (GMP) has announced that their new program which uses Tesla Powerwall and Tesla software Autobidder is benefiting consumers and the grid, and marks the first time stored energy in a household battery network is being used to balance a regional grid.

GMP said that pioneering a new Frequency Regulation Pilot program allows customers to share stored energy with regional grid operator ISO-New England to keep a steady, regulated flow of energy on the grid at all times, a critical function for regional system safety and reliability for customers.

Using their network of Powerwall batteries and Tesla Autobidder software, GMP is the first utility to perform this essential grid service in the wholesale power market with clean, stored energy distributed from customers' homes. In addition to reducing carbon dioxide emissions, this project also benefits all GMP customers by reducing energy costs. Last year, the GMP energy storage network cut the costs of all of its customers by more than $3 million.

“This project would not be possible without the great partnerships we have with our customers in the Powerwall program,” said Mari McClure, president and CEO of GMP. “This pilot is unique and important because it builds off our existing innovation and collaboration to deliver meaningful change to essential grid functions by reducing carbon emissions, increasing performance and lowering costs.”

GMP successfully entered the Regulation Market with this network of residential power sources after three months of testing with ISO-NE, and partnerships with ISO-NE, Tesla, and Customized Energy Solutions (CES). Tesla coordinates the distributed batteries to respond to signals from ISO-NE and aggregates critical data about the response. CES provides the key integrations between Tesla and ISO-NE.

GMP plans to expand this pilot program in the future. Customers sharing energy through the program are paid $13.50 per month on their energy statements. This includes a share for their program participation and for the increased use of their batteries, which can charge and discharge rapidly for periods of time each month. GMP takes steps to ensure that customers have backup power available if the weather is predicted to cause outages.

In 2017, GMP was the first utility to partner with Tesla and launched the first Powerwall pilot program. Now, through a series of groundbreaking programs, GMP is the first utility with tariffed home energy storage programs for customers. These programs provide participating customers with clean, seamless backup power via residential batteries in exchange for sharing some of that stored energy to reduce peak demand on the grid.

Source: VermontBiz

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Article edited by @SmokeyShorts, you can follow him on Twitter

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