Sunrun’s home battery service, BrightBox, uses solar and battery storage technology to enable customers to save on electricity bills with solar power and uses energy stored in the battery to power through electricity grid outages. Sunrun will use the ACES award to demonstrate how BrightBox can also coordinate energy stored in batteries with a utility’s need for power to balance peak demand on the grid as a whole or in local areas. The company states this will make the technology widely accessible and affordable to homeowners in Massachusetts.
“Both households and the electricity grid benefit from clean energy storage,” said Sunrun co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Lynn Jurich. “Distributed energy resources strengthen the grid and improve reliability.”
As part of the Baker-Polito Administration’s Energy Storage Initiative the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and Department of Energy Resources awarded $20 million dollars to support 26 energy storage demonstration projects across the Commonwealth. The ACES Program will help direct the Commonwealth’s first substantial investments in energy storage projects that demonstrate the benefits of storage to Massachusetts energy consumers.
“The development and deployment of energy storage projects will be vital to the Commonwealth’s ability to continue leading the nation in energy efficiency,” said Governor Baker. “Funding these storage projects is an investment in our energy portfolio that will reduce costs for ratepayers and help create a clean and resilient energy future.”
National Grid Ventures will provide technical advice to Sunrun on this project. In January, Sunrun and National Grid announced a multifaceted strategic partnership which includes a grid services pilot exploring the use of customer-sited energy storage to balance the electricity grid.
Photo: BrightBox
