Swell Energy has set up 45-MWh virtual power plant (VPP) contract with California utility Redwood Coast Energy Authority (RCEA), bringing essential power reliability to a region hard hit by wildfires and public safety power shutoffs in recent years.
“We’re facilitating energy resilience among vulnerable regions and communities and expanding the impact of renewable energy resources to the local grid — affording homeowners and small commercial customers additional benefits for participating in grid services programs, while bringing greater energy reliability and environmental benefits to the broader region,” said Suleman Khan, CEO of Swell Energy.
To quickly build a solar and energy storage customer base in the region, Swell is expanding its partnership with GRID Alternatives and leveraging all government, utility, and financial programs available to bring down customer costs and enroll both new and existing systems into the new Community Grid Program.
Residential, commercial, and industrial solar + storage sites located at a customer’s site can be eligible to participate in RCEA’s Community Grid Program. Customers can find more information online.
“RCEA is excited to be working with Swell and GRID to bring state and local incentives for energy storage to Humboldt County agencies, homes, and businesses,” said Matthew Marshall, Executive Director of RCEA. “The battery storage systems installed under this program can provide customer bill savings and grid benefits during normal daily operations but will also serve critical energy needs during power outages.”
News item from Swell Energy
In this area in particular, the PSPS is as onerous as the fires that seem to start even though power is turned off to a specific area to “avoid” a fire. But the recent Zogg fire still was sparked by PG&Es poor tree trimming program. The new CEO in town Patti Poppe has already announced PG&E has earmarked about $1.5 billion dollars to repair and harden utility feeders, replace about 30 miles of overhead lines and (10,000) miles of feeders will be undergrounded and the “claim” that trees will be trimmed and 300,000 trees will be “removed”. Personally to underground 10,000 miles of electric feeders would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $500,000 to $1,000,000 a mile or $5 billion to $10 billion dollars. An electricity rate increase that will cost every ratepayer in the PG&E service territory about $7.50 a month more for electricity for the next 20 years. Of course the “unspoken” here is PG&E seems to be alright with not installing any more natural gas feeders and having their customers become “all electric” in the future. This will require more off shore wind generation and energy storage. Now it has been established that solar PV farms can be installed from $0.70/watt up to around $1.05/watt. With energy storage depending on the size of the energy storage system determined for a particular project, the cost can go up to around $2/watt installed and perhaps more as the size of energy storage systems become 8 to 12 hours of energy storage instead of the now accepted standard of 4 hours. Off shore floating wind farms far enough out to sea, so the coastal committees can’t see them will cost more to set, operate and maintain. When Diablo Canyon nuclear plant is decommissioned in 2025, there will need to be about 10GW of wind generation and about 3 to 4 GWh of energy storage to take the place of the nuclear plant. Add these project costs to the ratepayer’s electric bills for the next 20 years and one may be looking at an electric bill increase of about $30.50 a month for the next 20 years. The interesting part is just where is the “tipping point” where ratepayers say NO MORE? It will only drive more CCAs in communities in the PG&E sphere of influence and residential ratepayers to open their big boy and big girl wallets to buy their own solar PV and smart energy storage systems.
Thus, the IOU electricity utility “death spiral” begins a faster decent into oblivion and about this time Patti Poppe will realize the board of directors are hiding behind her and this is NOT what “behind you all the way means”. At this point she will realize she is “on the menu, not the venue”. She will strap on her “golden parachute” and float off into the sunset, perhaps to Hawaii and HECO next.