As deployments of new and advanced distributed energy resources become more common SRP territory, home deployment of battery storage solutions is expected to enable potential customer savings attributed to the management of time-valued energy. SRP has deployed a residential demand price plan pilot to incentivize its end-users to use their loads wisely, aligning with the cost of providing energy services.

SRP collaborated with the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to study how commercially available battery storage systems work to address this customer need. Battery storage has been demonstrated to reduce peak demand in other geographies, and this research study applied several technological solutions to determine how effective it could be in the SRP market, considering SRP’s demand based price plan.

Additional efforts were identified to bridge key integration gaps relating to communication, controls, and aggregation. In order to gain further knowledge in these areas, with a focus on demonstrating demand charge reduction capabilities, SRP installed (3) PV solar systems in conjunction with battery energy storage systems on SRP employee residences. The objective is to research, test, demonstrate and contrast a variety of storage technologies and their efficacy to address the SRP demand based price plan.