The local power company is considering battery power for my community which is located at the tip of the Elk Neck peninsula that juts down into the top of the Chesapeake Bay. It looks like Sunverge offers a solar / battery solution but solar is not mentioned in the article.
Any comments or suggestions from the electrical experts?
Personally, I would prefer to see a single large battery installed where the power line enters the community. There are some low lying unoccupied lots nearby that could be used for south-facing solar panels.
ray
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Delmarva Power and Sunverge are working on a pilot project that will bring back up service to homes on the Elk Neck peninsula.
Jason Tucker, Delmarva’s project lead, said homeowners in that area will be contacted to determine interest in participating. This area was identified by the utility for its unique position on the grid.
“Most of the homes in Elk Neck are fed on a single line,” Tucker said. “If a tree comes down or some other outage, there’s no back up.”
Elsewhere in the system, Tucker said customers can be rerouted to another line while the outage is fixed. With no redundancy, Tucker said Elk Neck is the perfect spot to launch this pilot program.
“There are 270 homes south of Elk Neck State Park,” he said. Those who participate will need room in their home to place equipment about the size of a dishwasher.
“It’s two batteries and additional equipment,” he said. The lithium ion batteries have a 15 year life. Those batteries would be called into service when the power goes out. In the interim the power gathered by those batteries can be drawn out and put on the grid for use by others.
Maryland Public Service Commission ordered the program through the Maryland Energy Storage Act, which looks for alternative concepts. Delmarva Power is working under one of four proposals in which a third party operates the program on behalf of the utility.
Sunverge will be in charge of what’s being called the Behind the Meter Virtual Power Plant.
“We are honored and excited to be selected for this project and to have the opportunity to work with Delmarva Power to demonstrate the value of residential battery systems for the residents at Elk Neck and to the electric grid,” said Martin Milani, CEO of Sunverge.
“We are confident that Sunverge’s advanced distributed energy resource control and aggregation solution will demonstrate the value of aggregating residential behind-the meter systems for the Maryland electricity grid and participating residential customers. It will provide autonomous and aggregated energy storage, with the goal of providing additional grid reliability and resiliency benefitting Delmarva Power’s entire service area.”
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The community lies just to the south of the Elk Neck State Park label. There is actually state park to the north and south of the community. It's one of the nicest locations on the east coast of the USA and I have loved living here, despite the power outages whenever the wind blows.
My house is the yellow star in the image below. The blue line is where the power line enters the community.
