SunEdison, Inc., the world’s largest renewable energy development company, and Green Charge Networks, the largest provider of commercial energy storage in the U.S., today announced that they have teamed up to deliver a solar plus storage system to the municipal utility Silicon Valley Power. This project is part of an ongoing strategic partnership between SunEdison and Green Charge Networks to deliver additional electricity savings to commercial and municipal customers throughout California.
In California, the electricity bills for commercial and municipal customers typically have both energy charges and demand charges. By combining the benefits of solar and energy storage, SunEdison and Green Charge are able to generate savings on both portions of a customer’s bill. Solar delivers savings by reducing the amount of electricity drawn from the grid. Energy storage addresses the demand portion of the bill, and produces savings by reducing the amount of power needed at one time from the grid.
“Solar plus energy storage is a great way for California customers to realize immediate savings,” said Tim Derrick, SunEdison general manager of Advanced Solutions. “Demand charges in California can account for as much as 50 percent of a commercial or municipal customer’s electricity bill. By partnering with Green Charge, we’re able to deliver a complete solution and address our customers’ total energy bill.”
“Partnering with SunEdison and adding behind-the-meter storage, has created a one-stop-solution for commercial and municipal customers to holistically evaluate both their energy and power use,” said Vic Shao, CEO of Green Charge Networks.
Silicon Valley Power, the municipal utility serving the City of Santa Clara, is the first joint customer of the new partnership. The solar plus storage system is located at the Tasman Drive parking structure next to the new football stadium. To date, the SunEdison solar system at the Tasman Drive parking structure has generated more than 1.18 gigawatt hours of clean energy and eliminated the emission of approximately two million pounds of carbon dioxide. That’s enough electricity to power 112 homes for a year, and is the equivalent of taking more than 170 cars off the road.
“We are proud to have an intelligent energy storage system combined with an EV fast-charger at our Tasman Garage across from the stadium,” said John Roukema, the utility director of Silicon Valley Power. “This system has been in operation for more than nine months and was installed with no upfront costs to the utility.”
The strategic partnership combines SunEdison’s solar development, asset management and financing expertise with Green Charge’s intelligent energy storage system and networked management platform. Customers are able to install a solar plus storage system with zero upfront costs by signing a power purchase agreement with SunEdison and a power efficiency agreement with Green Charge.
Operation and maintenance of the solar power plants will be performed by SunEdison Services, which provides global 24/7 asset management, monitoring and reporting services. All operation and maintenance for the storage systems will be performed by Green Charge, which provides second by second monitoring of the system for the life of the contract.