A Home Battery Revolution Is Reshaping the Power Grid - Yale E360
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A technician installs a Base Power home battery system that will sell electricity to the power grid in Texas.<br>Base Power
home and commercial solar arrays provide nearly a fifth of australia’s electricity generation, with panels atop one in every three homes. to extend those panels’ usefulness, owners are increasingly buying home batteries not only to store their power for later use, but to sell electrons to the grid at times of high demand. the arrangement enables grid operators to more effectively manage the mismatch between midday solar generation and real-time consumer demand, a process known as balancing. it also lowers market energy prices because utilities that draw on batteries can avoid building expensive new power plants and power lines. australia laid the groundwork for this transformation last year by offering homeowners and small businesses a 30 percent discount on residential batteries, which resulted in 430,000 battery installations in less than a year, three times more than expected. a recent expansion of the cheaper home batteries program is expected to boost the number of installations to more than 2 million by 2030. if they agree to install a smart meter, battery owners can sell energy to the grid and put cash in their pockets: between $80 and $1,600 a year, depending on how the program is structured.in a dozen other countries, mostly in europe and north america, grid operators are writing checks to homeowners for the right to lease their batteries. "we're moving toward a world where homes don't just consume energy — they store it, optimize it, and contribute back to the grid,” says joe frodsham of the texas-based energy storage manufacturer renon power. a critical mass of home batteries scattered across a region and networked together through so-called virtual power plants, or vpps, he says, marks “the shift from energy storage as backup to energy storage as an active grid asset.”"><br>Home and commercial solar arrays provide nearly a fifth of Australia’s electricity generation, with panels atop one in every three homes. To extend those panels’ usefulness, owners are increasingly buying home batteries not only to store their power for later use, but to sell electrons to the grid at times of high demand. The arrangement enables grid operators to more effectively manage the mismatch between midday solar generation and real-time consumer demand, a process known as balancing. It also lowers market energy prices because utilities that draw on batteries can avoid building expensive new power plants and power lines.<br>Australia laid the groundwork for this transformation last year by offering homeowners and small businesses a 30 percent discount on residential batteries, which resulted in 430,000 battery installations in less than a year, three times more than expected. A recent expansion of the Cheaper Home Batteries Program is expected to boost the number of installations to more than 2 million by 2030. If they agree to install a smart meter, battery owners can sell energy to the grid and put cash in their pockets: between $80 and $1,600 a year, depending on how the program is structured.<br>In a dozen other countries, mostly in Europe and North America, grid operators are writing checks to homeowners for the right to lease their batteries. "We’re moving toward a world where homes don’t just consume energy — they store it, optimize it, and contribute back to the grid,” says Joe Frodsham of the Texas-based energy storage manufacturer Renon Power. A critical mass of home batteries scattered across a region and networked together through so-called virtual power plants, or VPPs, he says, marks “the shift from energy storage as backup to energy storage as an active grid asset.”
Last year, the amount of U.S. home battery capacity enlisted in virtual power plants grew by 153 percent.
Unlike a net metering system, which sends unused energy from rooftop solar panels directly into the grid in return for an energy credit, a VPP requires a storage system and software that tells the battery to send energy to the grid when it needs more power, like on a hot summer day. Compensation for tapping a homeowner’s battery is paid by either a local utility or a VPP program, of which there are now more than 500 in the U.S. and thousands in Europe.
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This rapid expansion of home batteries and advanced software that aggregates thousands of decentralized energy sources is “transforming not only the way electricity is generated, but also how it is traded, delivered, and consumed,” concludes a 2022 International Energy Agency report. These assets, the report said, “can provide valuable services to the grid when incentivized with appropriate technologies, policies, and regulations.”<br>Currently, fewer than 10 percent of...