Canadian muni launches solar-storage pilot to shift generation to peak hours

Dive Brief:

Canadian municipal utility Oshawa Power and Utilities Corp., in a partnership with Japanese manufacturer Tabuchi Electric, has begun a pilot program to test combined solar-plus-storage systems.
The program will allow about 30 homes in Oshawa to use solar energy and store it in order to shift energy demand from on-peak to off-peak hours and to provide backup power supply during power outages.
If successful, the program could be used to remotely control the use and flow of power from solar panels to batteries and the grid.

Dive Insight:

The municipal utility serving Oshawa, a town east of Toronto on Lake Ontario, is the latest explore the benefits of combining solar power and energy storage in a single system.

Oshawa Power and Utilities has begun a pilot program that will install solar + storage systems in about 30 homes at no cost to those customers.

The program is being implemented by a partnership of Oshawa Power, the City of Oshawa and the Japanese government agency New Energy and Industrial Development Organization.

The systems, by Tabuchi Electric, combine a solar inverter and lithium-ion battery to provide load shifting and backup power during outages.

Solar-plus-storage technologies could disrupt utility business models, but Oshawa Power is moving forward “because, we are in the 21st century and there are technologies now available for us to serve the customer’s needs better,” CEO Atul Mahajan said.

He said the year-and-a-half long program would allow Oshawa Power to study the technology closely and “most importantly develop innovative business models on our path to creating the utility of the future.”

The system could also eventually be used as the basis for creating a remotely operated virtual storage system, he said.

Several companies have recently announced plans to enter the solar-plus-storage market, including Tesla Motors whose Powerwall home batteries are being offered by SolarCity. (Elon Musk, Tesla's CEO, is the chairman of SolarCity, which he co-founded with his cousins.)

In New Zealand, Enphase Energy is rolling out an integrated system that combines solar panels with monitoring and storage capabilities.

In Hawaii, Kaua’i Island Utility Cooperative selected Solar City to install a 13-MW fully dispatchable solar-storage project.

And in Germany, Sonnebatterie has introduced a community storage system that combines solar panels, batteries and software to create a solar + storage microgrid.