Valencia Gardens Energy Storage
Brining resilient and reliable clean local energy to a San Francisco community
Natural Capitalism Solutions, dba Clean Coalition
Recipient
Santa Barbara, CA
Recipient Location
21st
Senate District
37th
Assembly District
$1,448,397
Amount Spent
Completed
Project Status
Project Result
The recipient worked through interconnection planning with PG&E and also received permit approval from the San Francisco Planning Commission on October 15, 2020 for the battery energy storage system. However, the San Francisco Fire Marshal updated the battery safety requirements for the site that requires the battery system not be placed within 100 ft of an occupied building. There is no location on this site that can meet that new requirement and the grant is being terminated. Although the battery will not be installed, lessons learned will be captured in a final report.
The Issue
Traditionally, renewable energy located on the distribution grid has been deployed one rooftop at a time, and when a circuit becomes congested there may not be an opportunity to add more. Energy storage in front of the meter provides potential to reduce the congestion and increase solar deployment, but demonstrations are needed to determine the value of front-of-the-meter (FTM) energy storage systems.
Project Innovation
The project will deploy 750kWh of energy storage at a public housing complex in San Francisco's Mission District with existing PV of 580kW on a circuit with a peak load of 570kW. Valencia Gardens has 218 family flats and 42 senior apartments among 16 buildings on a five-acre site. This Energy Storage System (ESS) will provide multiple integrated services – increasing the PV hosting capacity of the circuit, optimizing and balancing circuit load and generation, providing ancillary services to the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), and providing local grid resilience.
Project Benefits
This project will lead to technological advancement and breakthroughs to overcome barriers to the achievement of California's statutory energy goals by utilizing energy storage as a local balancing and optimization solution on a circuit on the distribution grid. The project will demonstrate a combination of advancements and breakthroughs including, but not limited to, an advanced local energy system that utilizes energy storage on a circuit to optimize local circuit balancing, increases PV hosting capacity and provides the California Independent System Operator with ancillary services.
Affordability
The project team estimates that this system will result in $240,000 in peak capacity savings per year and $425,000 in transmission and distribution line loss savings per year.
Environmental Sustainability
By enabling greater local penetration of PV, this project will contribute to a decrease in the reliance on fossil fuels for electricity generation, and thereby reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other hazardous emissions from power plants. The project team estimates that the10 MW of PV in the project area will yield 15,785 MWh of emissions-free generation per year, which is equivalent to offsetting the emissions of 2,052 average homes in PG&E territory.
Reliability
This project will enable higher penetrations of distributed renewable energy, improve circuit reliability, and optimize local balancing of electricity supply and demand. It will utilize indefinite, renewables-based backup power to critical loads in a disadvantaged community during grid outages to achieve greater community resilience.
Key Project Members
Craig Lewis
Subrecipients
PATHION, INC
REP Energy
Match Partners
PATHION, INC
