SoCal Edison’s Grid Edge Experiment Contracts for 125MW of Batteries and Demand Response

Advanced Micro­grid Solu­tions, Nex­tEra, NRG, Swell, Hecate and Con­ver­gent win con­tracts for bat­ter­ies and demand response in Orange Coun­ty pilot project.

South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Edi­son has picked six com­pa­nies to build 125 megawatts of dis­trib­uted ener­gy stor­age and demand response for its Pre­ferred Resources Pilot, a long-term test­ing ground to learn how dis­trib­uted ener­gy and the grid can work together.

Win­ners of this sec­ond round of PRP con­tracts include Advanced Micro­grid Solu­tions, with a 40-megawatt con­tract for demand response with ener­gy con­ser­va­tion and bat­ter­ies; Con­ver­gent with 35 megawatts of bat­ter­ies; Hecate with 15 megawatts of bat­ter­ies; Nex­tEra with 10 megawatts of bat­ter­ies and 10 megawatts of demand response, NRG with 10 megawatts of solar-stor­age “hybrid,” and res­i­den­tial bat­tery start­up Swell with 5 megawatts of batteries.

SCE is offer­ing 10- to 20-year con­tract terms, with deliv­ery set to begin between 2018 and 2020. Between now and then, these com­pa­nies will be busy find­ing sites and sign­ing up cus­tomers with­in a very spe­cif­ic grid foot­print — the areas of Orange Coun­ty served by SCE’s Johan­na and San­ti­a­go substations.

This patch of grid is a hot spot for future pow­er short­ages and imbal­ances, caused by the clo­sure of the San Onofre nuclear pow­er plant, the com­ing clo­sures of nat­ur­al-gas-fired pow­er plants serv­ing the area, and the chang­ing pat­terns of grid pow­er gen­er­a­tion over the course of the day, large­ly dri­ven by the growth rooftop solar PV.

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