New DERMS Partnership Helps Utilities Use Residential Batteries as Virtual Power Plants

Renewable Energy World: This week Autogrid announced that it entered into a partnership with Swell Energy to provide software for managing Swell’s growing fleet of distributed energy resources (DER).

Los Angeles-based Swell has a pipeline of over 35 MWh of residential energy storage projects in California, which it is assembling into a virtual power plant to deliver grid services.

AutoGrid’s distributed energy resources management system (DERMS) will allow Swell to control not only its 2500 behind-the-meter home batteries installed across California, but also connected digital devices, such as smart thermostats, and to lower electricity demand through voluntary customer efforts — so-called behavioral demand-response (DR) programs.

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