Sunrun hails 1st season of virtual power plant in wholesale market

US residential solar and storage provider Sunrun Inc (NASDAQ:RUN) on Tuesday said it has completed its first season operating a residential virtual power plant (VPP) in a wholesale capacity market in what is a novelty for the US.

The company’s New England VPP networked thousands of home solar systems to support the grid during peak demand. The VPP sent more than 1.8 GWh of energy back to the grid in the summer months of June through August. The VPP also helped to reduce the use of expensive and polluting peaker plants.

In 2019, Sunrun won a bid to deliver energy capacity to the Independent System Operator - New England (ISO-NE) that was the first successful bid for providing capacity from home solar and battery storage systems to the grid. According to the company’s 2019 announcement the contract is for 20 MW of energy capacity, representing about 5,000 New England customers.

Sunrun chief executive Mary Powell said the collaboration with ISO-NE shows “the importance of every market operator leveraging local clean energy resources to solve capacity constraints and grid reliability.”

“As more severe and frequent heat waves, arctic freezes and other climatic events continue to stress our nation’s grid, we strongly encourage grid operators, utilities and policy makers alike to leverage these amazing solar energy resources,” Powell added.

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