RE+ live blog: Wednesday (original) (raw)

The largest clean energy event in North America feels that way.

RE+ packed the Anaheim Convention Center and surrounding campus yesterday, and lemme tell ya- it’s going to be even busier today. A source connected with event organizers tells me attendance should be very close to 50,000 people this year. There’s nowhere to plug in your stuff and you’ve gotta pay airport prices for coffee- but it also means there are a lot of cool things to see and interesting people to talk to!

I’ll be updating this page throughout the day with some of the action from Anaheim, including musings from clean energy executives and tours of a couple of cool exhibitions I’ve been waiting to check out. If you missed my live blog Monday or Tuesday, you can catch up by clicking the hyperlinks.

Grazin’ hell at RE+

I finally got to meet the biggest celebrities of RE+ 2024- the sheep in the American Solar Grazing Association (ASGA) exhibit! Take a look at these baaaaaaad boys:

The Agrivoltaics Showcase introduces the possibilities of dual use, the concept of utilizing land for power generation in addition to farming. Solar grazing is becoming more and more popular as a solution to maintaining solar farms with tricky terrain or other vegetation management hurdles.

Last month, Enel announced a partnership with Texas Solar Sheep Company to deploy more than 6,000 sheep to feast on greenery sprawling eight Texas solar sites. It is the largest known solar grazing agreement executed in the United States, per the companies.

Sheep chilling outside the Anaheim Convention Center at the USGA Solar Grazing exhibit.

EVLO debuts a big ol’ BESS

Quebec Hydro battery energy storage spin-off EVLO Energy debuted its new EVLO SYNERGY at RE+. It’s a high-density 5MWh lithium-ion BESS with a 2-4 hour duration.

EVLO vice president of sales and business development Martin Rheault told me the SYNERGY is available to order now, and can deploy as soon as mid-2025.

“The demand is not stopping, it’s just growing,” Rheault told me this morning. “Customers are asking for higher density, and on the other end, they need an integrator that is local to understanding the tech at the pace it’s evolving, in addition to grid requirements.”

EVLO cannot yet disclose the first locations where these batteries will be deployed, but the news is coming sometime soon.

EVLO, based in Canada, commissioned its first U.S. project last month, an innovative utility-scale BESS in Vermont. The 3 MW/12 MWh battery, co-owned and operated by Vermont Electric Cooperative and Green Mountain Power, will store energy at the height of production to use later during peak demand, which helps to smooth out the intermittency of renewable power generation while delivering value to local utility customers.

Last week, EVLO announced plans to deploy more than 300 MWh in BESS projects in Virginia.

“For us, it’s a bit of credibility,” Rheault offered. “Canada is an interesting market, but the U.S. is the biggest (right now).”

A follow-up on some PV art

Remember the Miner family from Monday’s live blog? I bumped into the father-son duo making art out of recycled solar panels and other materials again today, and got a glimpse of their finished works. Behold!

Very cool stuff. I really dig that oceanscape!

Chatting microgrids, EV charging solutions with Schneider

Today Schneider Electric announced the new Schneider Charge Pro Level 2 AC Commercial Electric Vehicle Charger, engineered to deliver energy-efficient and sustainable charging for commercial fleets, workplaces, multifamily residences, and destination venues.

I also had the opportunity to chat with Jana Gerber, Schneider’s North American microgrid president, about the company’s innovative microgrid solutions that are popping up all over the country. Schneider says it has done more than 350 such projects in the U.S., both large and small.

“Now we’re seeing a lot around EV electrification,” Gerber alluded, referencing Schneider’s work on the Montgomery County, Maryland bus depot project.

In June AlphaStruxure and Montgomery County broke ground in Gaithersburg on an integrated microgrid infrastructure project featuring electric bus charging and on-site green hydrogen production powered by solar and battery energy storage. Once completed, the David F. Bone Equipment Maintenance and Transit Operations Center (EMTOC) will be the largest renewable energy-powered transit depot in the United States. It will also be the biggest transit depot microgrid and the first on the East Coast to produce green hydrogen on-site, per AlphaStruxure.

The about 7.5-MW microgrid project is expected to be built by the fall of 2025. It will ultimately consist of solar arrays, electric bus chargers, battery energy storage, and a county-owned hydrogen electrolyzer, allowing the depot to operate in “island mode” indefinitely.

Gerber told me about the possible applications for the EcoStruxure Microgrid Flex, a simple and streamlined “microgrid in a box-type solution” that can connect to various solar inverters and battery energy storage generators. She sees it working in small-to-medium-sized buildings like schools or medical offices.

“We’ve deployed recently in a library that wants to be a kind of ‘shelter in place’ solution for the surrounding community,” Gerber said. “It’s really lower engineered time, lower cost, shorter time frames to get manufactured. It will help ‘deploy, deploy, deploy’ as the DOE often says!”

The must-see styles of RE+

And the award for best footwear of RE+ 2024 goes to…

I’m not an expert, but those appear to be Jordan 3s (?) and those are definitely matching Canadian Solar laces. If you happen to know the identity of this anonymous trendsetter, give me a shout and I’ll show him some love on the site! Otherwise- excellent kicks, my dude.

You down with VPP? Yeah, you know me

Residential solar and storage company and virtual power plant pioneer Sunrun is partnering with Vistra on a new program for homeowners that aggregates power stored in residential solar-connected batteries, forming a virtual power plant to dispatch energy back to the grid.

The TXU Energy & Sunrun Battery Rewards program will be facilitated through Vistra’s flagship retail electricity brand, TXU Energy. TXU Energy customers who opt into the program and have installed Sunrun home solar panels and batteries will receive financial incentives for their participation while retaining control of their systems during power outages or severe weather conditions, the companies said.

“We’re providing batteries to customers then partnering with Vistra to have those customers be on Vistra supply, and then using the batteries to reduce the cost to serve and lower Vistra’s overall procurement costs,” explained Chris Rauscher, head of grid services and VPPs at Sunrun (and a GridTECH Connect Forum speaker alum). “So it’s really a win, win, win because it also helps bring down overall grid costs in ERCOT.”

I had the chance to pick Rauscher’s brain on Sunrun’s first-of-its-kind bidirectional EV power plant pilot program that’s tapping into three F-150 Lightning trucks in Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE territory. Customers are being paid $200 per kilowatt month for participating, and all they have to do is plug their trucks in to charge in the evening.

“Effectively, we’re taking the home load off the grid during peak times,” Rauscher explained. “We have one customer who would normally have both his Lightning plugged in as well as his second EV to charge in the evening. Through this program, the Lightning is supplying power to run his house and to charge his other EV, and the utility sees zero impact from all that demand.”

One truck is equivalent to about ten Tesla Powerwall home batteries, allowing for a ton of flexibility.

“I really believe that in a 5-10 year time horizon, this is going to be massive,” foretold Rauscher. “Automakers are already starting to see that this is going to be a table-stakes feature for EVs. You have to have bi-directionality. Then once the hardware is commoditized and not just proprietary, you will see it be ubiquitous.”