Battery maker sonnen has signed on as the exclusive energy storage partner for a virtual power plant in Westchester County, New York. The initial pilot phase of sonnenCommunity New York consists of 200 homes. Non-profit CCA Sustainable Westchester will work with sonnen and local solar contractors to build this dispatchable grid asset that will provide homeowners with resilient backup power.
Qualifying new and existing solar customers of the sonnenCommunity NY VPP subscription program now have access to a solar + sonnen storage installation. Quest Solar and SunBlue Energy, two regional contractors and installation partners, will take the lead in implementing this program locally, pursuing new and retrofit sales of rooftop solar and sonnen ecoLinx systems among eligible homeowners throughout Westchester County.
With sonnen’s VPP software platform, Logical Buildings, a third-party scheduling coordinator and aggregator can dispatch the planned 80 MWh of ecoLinx batteries in the sonnenCommunity NY VPP for dynamic participation and revenue generation in the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) market. Batteries enrolled in the program can also provide demand response services to the local utility, ConEdison, including solar time shifting, reduced demand for peaking resources, grid decongestion during peak periods and lower carbon emissions.
Based on the outcomes of the initial pilot with Sustainable Westchester, sonnen hopes to expand the project footprint into several Long Island communities, through a partnership with similar programs under development. The ultimate goal is to bring 5,000 new solar + storage units per quarter online in the sonnenCommunity NY VPP by 2024.
“By joining this program, homeowners are not just making an investment in their own home’s resilience and sustainability in the face of extreme weather and outages, they are contributing to a greener, more sustainable future for their local power grid,” said Blake Richetta, Chairman and CEO of sonnen.
