Customers want to move more toward self-generation

July 30, 2017 8:42 PM

Throughout Vermont, customers are signing up for a new program that will allow them to power their homes while entirely disconnected from the grid. The projects are part of a bold experiment aimed at turning homes, neighborhoods and towns into virtual power plants, able to reduce the amount of energy they draw from the central electric system. But behind them are not green energy advocates or proponents of living off the land. Instead, it’s the local electric company, Green Mountain Power. [NYT]
posted by Chrysostom (7 comments total)

This is super cool, I'd love to be involved in something like this. It must be really exciting to know you are the first to go in a whole new, much better direction. And it's probably not too surprising that the land of ice storms was the easiest place to get this off the ground. The utility will likely save the money in overtime after storms alone, not to mention emergency calls when the power goes out. Imagine if everyone had a couple days of power.
posted by fshgrl at 9:53 PM on July 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

Very cool! See also Bill McKibben's 2015 New Yorker piece Power to the People.
posted by AwkwardPause at 10:57 PM on July 30, 2017 [1 favorite]

this is good if it can help dissolve all this energy utility BS about oil and gas power being more resilient in the face of storms than solar.

I don't think entergy new orleans' gas plant was up for months after katrina, but to hear them talk, the rebuilding of the city wouldn't have happened without it.
posted by eustatic at 11:14 PM on July 30, 2017

Here's a comment from my SO, who is a regular MeFi reader but still hasn't made the jump to getting his own user handle:

Thanks for posting this – I am doing a PhD in Energy System modeling and have just sent this article to our research group.
Storage, preferably decentralized storage, is exactly what is needed to allow a higher share of wind and solar power on the grid to reduce carbon emissions.
Nevertheless, I want to post this to avoid confusion:
Two-thousand customers (out of >200,000) of Green Mountain Power can sign up to have a Tesla Powerwall installed in their home, but homes remain dependant on the power grid – they are not disconnected.
In the event of an outage, a full battery will be able to power the home for a day or so. However, the battery may not be fully charged when an (unforeseen) outage occurs, because control of charging/discharging the battery will remain with the utility. (They make their money back by trading that stored energy on the wholesale electricity market). Outages often occur in times of high demand, which means that the utility will have likely taken some of that stored energy and a full day of power may not be available. I don’t think their technicians will be working any less to get everyone reconnected ASAP, although customers will certainly be less inconvenienced if they aren’t sitting in the dark instantly.
That being said, I hope the project works out. It is always encouraging to see a successful business model around the challenging storage problem!
posted by ipsative at 3:15 AM on July 31, 2017 [12 favorites]

We were one of the first Vermont Powerwall installations, starting in May 2016. It was tricky to set up, but the thing's been very good since. We lose power every couple of months, and the giant battery keeps most of the house going for a while.
posted by doctornemo at 10:05 AM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]

Please tell your SO we want him to get an account because his expertise is going to be an interesting addition to our discussions around here in the coming years.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 10:06 AM on July 31, 2017 [2 favorites]

I don’t think their technicians will be working any less to get everyone reconnected ASAP, although customers will certainly be less inconvenienced if they aren’t sitting in the dark instantly.

I wonder whether there are also network benefits in terms reducing average blackout time for consumers. That can be a significant metric for network company performance.
posted by biffa at 9:34 AM on August 2, 2017