Clean Coalition receives CEC grant for solar+storage in San Francisco
The Clean Coalition will lead the Valencia Gardens Energy Storage project, adding 1096 kilowatt-hours of energy storage to the roughly 800 kilowatts of rooftop solar already in place.
In March 2017, the Clean Coalition was selected to receive a grant from theCalifornia Energy Commission’s (CEC) Electric Program Investment Charge program, which offered “Solar +: Taking the Next Steps to Enable Solar as a Distribution Asset.” Under this grant, the Clean Coalition will lead the implementation of an innovative energy storage system that will be paired with an existing rooftop solar project.
In collaboration with project partners that include Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), The City and County of San Francisco, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), PATHION (an energy storage company), and the Mission Housing Development Corporation (owner of the multi-hundred unit senior and low income housing Valencia Gardens Apartments), the Clean Coalition will lead the Valencia Gardens Energy Storage project, which adds 1096kilowatt-hours of energy storage to the roughly 800 kilowatts of rooftop solar that is already interconnected to the distribution grid within Valencia Gardens Apartments. The Valencia Gardens Energy Storageproject has three fundamental objectives, all of which will inform Community Microgrids projects going forward:
- Increase the hosting capacity of the circuit by at least 25%.
- Provide a comprehensive case study on the economics of utilizing energy storage for provisioning grid services through wholesale markets; via CAISO and potentially the local utility, which is PG&E.
- Investigate the full set of costs and benefits for the Valencia Gardens Energy Storageproject to provide Community Microgrid resilience to priority loads within the neighborhood, including those at the Valencia Gardens Apartments and other nearby PG&E customers. This objective will require comprehensive assessment of technical requirements, prospective solutions, costs, benefits, and potential compensation mechanisms.
Valencia Gardens solar+storage system diagram
Further, the Valencia Gardens Energy Storage project will leverage in-process efforts between the Clean Coalition and PG&E to streamline wholesale distributed generation interconnection, which is happening through an existing CEC grant for the Clean Coalition’sPeninsula Advanced Energy Community.
