AutoGrid’s Flex Platform Helps Sunrun to manage its Residential Batteries’ Fleet

AutoGrid, a leading flexibility management software provider, has entered into a partnership with Sunrun to provide AutoGrid Flex™ Virtual Power Plant (VPP) software to help manage the latter’s growing fleet of residential batteries across the United States.

Sunrun, founded in 2007, is one of the leading home solar, battery storage, and energy services company.

Further, this AutoGrid Flex platform will help in enhancing Sunrun’s ability to use grid-services revenue to offer affordable solar and storage products to homeowners.

Commenting on the deal, Lynn Jurich, CEO and co-founder of Sunrun, said that “rooftop solar and batteries are helping households power through uncertainty. AutoGrid will enhance our capabilities to offer utilities an aggregated fleet of home solar and battery resources to make the electric grid cleaner and more resilient while reducing costs for all energy consumers.”

As per the agreement signed, Sunrun will use features of the AutoGrid Flex platform to help manage its fleet of Brightbox rechargeable solar batteries and offer new, innovative grid services and energy management solutions.

Moreover, the cloud-based platform enhances the company’s ability to work with utilities and other electricity providers to optimize and dispatch its storage fleet for the maximum economic benefit of both customers and the grid.

In May, Sunrun announced that the company maintains USD 50 million in grid services revenue that’s been either contracted or in the pipeline, with projects in New England, California and Hawaii. The company said that these grid services revenues not only help lower the cost of energy storage systems for customers, they also help lower the overall cost of operating the grid by avoiding and deferring expensive infrastructure upgrades and reducing the need to purchase cost-prohibitive peak power.

“As economies are coming back from lockdowns imposed by COVID-19, we are seeing increased societal demand for sustainable energy along with significant demand for cloud-based digital solutions that improve the efficiency of operations and competitiveness for energy companies addressing this demand,” said Amit Narayan, Founder & CEO, AutoGrid.

Earlier, AutoGrid has entered into a strategic partnership with Schneider Electric, a specialist in global energy management and automation. The motive behind the deal was to help energy providers integrate customer-owned or -operated flexible distributed energy resources (DERs) into their distribution management operations.