Get Your Behind-the-Meter Battery for $15 a Month

[kristopher]

Tesla and Green Mountain Power: Get Your Behind-the-Meter Battery for $15 a Month

Tesla and Green Mountain Power: Get Your Behind-the-Meter Battery for $15 a Month
A super-cheap energy storage offering, built on the promise of the Powerwall 2 and SolarCity’s GridLogic software.

by Jeff St. John
May 12, 2017

Tesla and Vermont utility Green Mountain Power are offering a low price for home backup batteries: $15 per month.

Now they’ve only got to get 2,000 customers to sign up, and make sure they’re capturing the additional grid benefits from each Powerwall 2 to make the price pencil out for the utility.

That’s the plan behind Tesla’s offering, unveiled Friday, to equip Vermonters with emergency backup power during blackouts.

That’s less than half the $37.50 per month that GMP set for its first test-run offering of Powerwalls back in late 2015, after testing Tesla’s technology in a pilot project in Rutland, Vt.

The difference in prices comes from two main sources...
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/tesla-and-green-mountain-power-get-your-behind-the-meter-battery-for-15-a-m?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=GTMDaily

[kristopher]

1. DSO - distribution system operator

Platform-Based Electric Grids Are Coming, but the Transition Is Proving a Challenge
The complexities of building a DSO system are becoming more evident, writes Dan Cross-Call of the Rocky Mountain Institute.

by Dan Cross-Call
May 12, 2017
1
Platform business models have redefined the modern economy. From titans of personal computing and e-commerce like Apple and Amazon, to ubiquitous financial services that we use with hardly a second thought (such as ATMs and credit cards), industries everywhere have reoriented from one-directional pipeline delivery systems to multisided platforms via which information and services flow in many directions between actors.

This platform concept has also been suggested for the electric utility sector -- often under the title of a “distribution system operator,” or DSO. Concepts from platform markets hold tremendous promise for addressing many of the modern challenges on the grid, including the integration of distributed energy resources (DERs) and the business challenges associated with that.

Yet despite the promise and seeming appropriateness of such concepts, the innovation and reimagining of producer/consumer relationships that platform markets can offer have been slow to be introduced on the grid.

There are reasons for this. The electricity system is immensely complex, and many roles, regulations, and physical systems need to be considered before a fully baked DSO or platform design can be realized. But it would be a mistake to conclude from this that DSO platforms are out of reach or too difficult to implement in the electricity industry.

In fact, DSO innovation is already happening ...
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-promise-of-platform-based-grids?utm_source=Daily&utm_medium=Newsletter&utm_campaign=GTMDaily