The proposed vendor-neutral distributed battery and microgrid program would pair solar with batteries that would be sited in homes, community centers, restaurants, senior centers and other resilience “hubs”. The batteries would be networked together into a “virtual power plant” (VPP) to support the grid.
This investment would leverage hundreds of millions of federal dollars in clean energy funding. The benefits of pairing batteries with solar would be vast and go far beyond resilience. The proposal notes that this program would allow energy services to be quickly provided from homes, community centers, restaurants, senior centers and other resilience “hubs” enrolled in resilience and VPP programs. The organizations asked the Council to create a public docketed process to ensure transparency and community involvement in the design & implementation of such programs. The proposal was informed by three years of proceedings (Docket UD-21-03) following the tragic outages during Hurricane Ida.
After hearing our proposal, the Council voted to open a new docket (docket UD-24-02) to vet program proposals and bring in robust stakeholder input & discussion to determine a path forward for vendor-neutral program design that motivates massive clean, distributed grid investment in New Orleans.
Bringing thousands more batteries to New Orleans, placed on institutions and homes, will build upon the city’s existing infrastructure and help power homes and businesses when the electricity grid is down, saving money, critical supplies and lives. And when these currently uncoordinated batteries are grouped together into a VPP, they create an energy network that can interact as a firm, dispatchable grid asset to provide specific grid services. Beyond capability to operate separately from the grid when needed, batteries orchestrated together this way can mitigate peak demand on blue-sky days, provide instantaneous grid balancing services, and offer cost-effective, flexible energy and capacity. A vendor-neutral distributed battery and microgrid program will contribute to the City’s climate and renewables goals, and create economic and workforce opportunities.
