The rapid adoption of distributed energy resources such as solar, energy storage, and smart home energy devices has created an enormous opportunity for customers to take control of their energy and participate in developing a cleaner and more resilient grid in a manner never before available. In effort to help customers manage their energy production and use, while simultaneously benefitting the electric grid, Swell Energy created a proprietary distributed energy resource management software calledGridAmp. GridAmp organizes and controls Distributed Energy Resources and operates them collectively as Virtual Power Plants (VPP) enabling the transition away from the polluting power plants of the past, and bringing significant value to both customers and utilities.
GridAmp’s ability to control and manage thousands of customer-sited solar and energy storage as well as integrate with local utilities enables GridAmp to effectively operate a fleet of systems when and where it is most valuable to the grid. When a grid event is called by the utility, GridAmp’s advanced machine learning models determine and manage the optimal system performance for each customer based on their historic energy use, weather data, and more for each event, every time. With GridAmp’s advanced technology, Swell can deliver multiple grid services through the same battery systems enabling more value to utilities and Swell customers.
GridAmp ensures that enrolled VPP customers receive the maximum credit available from their utility for their systems performance in responding to grid events - we call these credits GridRevenue. Simultaneously, GridAmp continues to ensure maximum utility bill savings - we call this GridSavings - for customers by optimizing solar generation and battery performance, while also preserving the resiliency benefits of the home energy system in the event of a power outage. . The co-optimization of customer value streams from GridRevenue and GridSavings is possible because of GridAmp’s advanced functionality to prioritize customer benefits. For example, although a customer’s battery must be fully charged from solar before the peak period in order to maximize bill savings, it does not matter to the customer whether this occurs in the morning or afternoon; but delaying charging to the afternoon makes the batteries available in the morning to serve the utilities by soaking up excess energy from the grid when there’s an overproduction of renewable generation. Similarly, keeping the batteries full longer into the evening hours can better serve utilities by discharging at the exact time when demand surges. GridAmp calculates all these GridRevenue or GridSavings opportunities and more, and manages the system accordingly behind the scenes to save you money while also benefiting the grid.
Swell Energy is using GridAmp to manage its VPPs in Hawaii providing significant incentives to customers. Swell VPP customers in Hawaii are getting paid directly on their utility bills with some participants eliminating their utility bills entirely.
GridAmp’s performance in Hawaii has demonstrated its tremendous potential for aggregating and deploying customer-sited distributed energy resources at scale. As the proliferation of smart energy technologies continues to grow exponentially at the grid edge, GridAmp is integrating utilities and customers across the US. Learn more about VPP programs and check your eligibility here: swellenergy.com/vpp