Image: Sonnen
Spruce Power, one of the nation’s largest owners and operators of distributed generation assets, has entered a supply and partnership agreement with sonnen Inc., a smart residential energy storage system manufacturer.
Just a few weeks ago, Spruce Power announced that it would be expanding into integrated smart energy systems.
The partnership now opens the door for Spruce’s 50,000 existing residential solar customers to upgrade their home solar systems with a battery storage solution. The two companies are also early in talks to create virtual power plant (VPP) projects in emerging distributed energy resource (DER) aggregation markets such as New York and California that have programs to support the growth of behind-the-meter storage systems.
Existing Spruce customers have the option to add the sonnenCore 10 kWh home battery system to their solar installation and can use the company’s newly-launched online Battery System Sizing Tool to determine the size, configuration, and backup duration for a home battery system upgrade. The sonnenCore system provides homeowners with a source of energy in the case of emergencies or blackouts, as well as the ability to extract cost savings by managing time-of-use charges.
According to sonnen, it has deployed more than 12.6 MWh of VPP projects built around the sonnen ecoLinx battery. The two companies hope that some of the customers that choose to add storage to their solar system will also choose to enter into their VPP projects.
