Dive Brief:

  • Sunnova Energy International is expanding access to its virtual power plant network across seven states and territories where its customers can currently earn compensation for grid services, it said in a news release Wednesday.
  • Participating grid services programs include the Sunnova Power Grid Protect and Emergency Load Reduction programs in California, the Battery Storage Rewards program in New York, the ConnectedSolutions program in New England, the Sunnova Flex Power program in Puerto Rico and the Adaptive Retail Energy plan in Texas.
  • Sunnova’s expansion will “enable customers to rapidly access stored battery power during periods of peak demand [and] in some cases send excess power back to the electrical grid,” reducing blackout risk, the company said.

Dive Insight:

Tripling VPP capacity by 2030 could reduce grid costs by about $10 billion annually while meeting 10% to 20% of peak electricity demand, according to a DOE report released last year.

Current U.S. VPP capacity is 30 GW to 60 GW, the DOE said. Sunnova’s 419,000 customers account for about 1 GWh of storage capacity, which “will go a long way in supporting struggling grids [and] decarbonizing our energy systems,” Sunnova CEO John Berger said in the release.

Since its debut in November, Sunnova’s 10-MWh Puerto Rico VPP has “helped prevent five grid outages that could have potentially impacted several hundred thousand homes on the island,” the company said.

Sunnova’s Puerto Rico VPP achieved those results with “more than 1,000 customers,” the company said. But Sunnova had “over 52,000 solar and storage customers, totaling an installed storage capacity of 800 MWh” as of last November, the company said in a news release at the time, suggesting its impact could be far greater with more customers enrolled.

“Virtual power plants are far from virtual,” Sunnova Executive Vice President of Regulatory and Government Affairs Meghan Nutting told Utility Dive in an email. “These are … real energy sources being dispatched akin to traditional centralized power plants, except that they are situated on rooftops.”

Puerto Rico VPP participants can receive up to $1,000 for a single-battery installation during the first year the program is active on the island, depending on the system size and how frequently the battery is dispatched, the company said in November. Eversource and National Grid customers can earn up to $730 in Massachusetts and $1,300 in Rhode Island through the ConnectedSolutions program, according to Sunnova’s website.

Sunnova’s VPPs run on a proprietary technology called Sunnova Sentient technology, which optimizes demand response and grid support activity across its networks. Solar and storage systems are increasingly popular with Sunnova customers, reaching “24% of new customer originations last quarter,” Nutting said in the Wednesday release.

VPP programs have found success in places not yet served by Sunnova. Sonnen USA CEO Blake Richetta told Utility Dive last month that his company’s Utah VPP has more than 4,000 customers enrolled through Rocky Mountain Power’s Wattsmart program and a 100 MWh capacity target for 2024.