Baker Electric Home Energy Launches ChargeOn Battery Rewards Program
Photo courtesy of sonnen
Cleantech San Diego member Baker Electric Home Energy, a leading solar, battery, and home energy solution provider, has announced the launch of its ChargeOn Battery Rewards Program in partnership with sonnen, a global market leader in smart energy storage and virtual power plant (VPP) technology. ChargeOn rewards participating Baker Electric Home Energy residential customers in Southern California for supporting the state’s power grid. Baker is the first in California to provide this advanced consumer battery program, using the sonnenConnect platform, offering a sustainable alternative to net energy metering (NEM).
The use of virtual power plant technology has been growing around the world. A VPP works by aggregating thousands of individual home batteries which helps reduce grid demand by injecting renewable energy back into the electrical grid, with the goal of keeping the network stable and reducing the need to generate more power from traditional fossil fuel sources.
Baker’s ChargeOn Battery Reward Program is the first to utilize the sonnenConnect California program, which will manage and operate groups of sonnen batteries using the sonnenVPP platform. Baker customers will benefit from having their battery optimized to best offset time of use rates, to lower electricity bills and provide monthly cash payments for providing grid services.
“We witnessed this month’s record-breaking heatwave stress California’s electric grid,” said Mike Teresso, President at Baker Electric Home Energy. “The ChargeOn Battery Program will be a game changer as Baker will install sonnen batteries that will be networked with other residential batteries across California, benefiting both the grid and our customers.”
Baker’s ChargeOn Battery Rewards Program features several benefits including monthly cash payments for Baker customers enrolled in sonnenConnect:
- Reduced electricity bills – In addition to the dramatic reduction in electricity bills, following solar and battery installation, ChargeOn customers will also benefit from the added efficiencies from sonnenConnect software. Each sonnen battery will be professionally managed by sonnen for optimal efficiency – a critical feature given the anticipated changes coming under NEM 3.0.
- Cash rewards for offsetting electrical load and potentially sharing energy – The program produces monthly cash payments for enrolled customers who are helping meet California’s clean energy goals.
- Resiliency for California – Each sonnen battery helps stabilize the greater California energy grid, mitigating power outages and reducing dependence on traditional power plants.
- Backup power – Customers with rooftop solar paired with a sonnen battery will also have backup power when the electric grid goes down.
- Rebate – $750 rebate for each sonnen battery installed.
Customer enrollment is already underway. Baker Electric Home Energy is aiming to install 1.5MWh of new capacity in 2022 and rapidly scale to 15 MWh in 2023, 25 MWh in 2024, and 35 MWh in 2025. In total, Baker plans to install over 75 MWh of new capacity across more than 5,000 customer households by the end of 2025.
“There are more than one million homes with rooftop solar in California,” said Teresso. “If only 10 percent had smart, grid interactive batteries, the Flex Alerts may have been avoided, and California would be making progress toward its 2030 goal of 60% reliance on renewable energy.”
sonnen demonstrated the impact of grid-interactive smart batteries in partnership with ES Solar using the innovative Wattsmart Program developed by Rocky Mountain Power, originally in Utah and recently expanded into Idaho. Baker Electric Home Energy believes the easily replicable sonnenConnect model is critical to transforming the solar industry in California beyond net metering to help accelerate the energy transition nationwide.
“We are honored to launch sonnenConnect California in partnership with Baker Electric Home Energy’s ChargeOn Program. Baker Electric Home Energy is an industry leading solar provider, with a reputation for quality, customer service and pioneering new technologies,” said Blake Richetta, Chairman and CEO of sonnen, Inc. “With the Baker team’s dedication to bring this innovation to consumers, I am confident we will reach the necessary scale of smart, grid interactive batteries in California required to make rolling blackout alerts, like those that we recently experienced, a worry of the past.”
More information is available about the ChargeOn Battery Program including cash rewards and an upfront rebate at bakerhomeenergy.com/sonnen.
“For those who have put off getting rooftop solar, now is the time,” said Teresso. “We see the added customer value of solar plus a smart battery and the sonnen partnership giving us the potential to revolutionize how rooftop solar is designed and utilized in California.”
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