Green Mount Power, the statewide utility in Vermont, is ahead of the curve on many Grid 2.0 technologies – partly because it’s so small (just 265,000 residential and business customers) that it can “pivot” quickly, partly because its customers are Vermonters are are more open to crunchy-granola-type stuff.
One of its most interesting projects is subsidizing in-home power batteries from Tesla that are hooked together to create a virtual power plant, along with connections to electric water heaters and electric car chargers. In a story from Vermont Business Magazine (read it here), the company claims it saved close to $500,000 in the recent heat wave through this system, apparently because it had to buy less expensive electricity when demand was really high, which is when wholesale power prices are also really high.
Along with GMP’s solar-storage facilities in Rutland and Panton and about 500 Tesla Powerwalls, GMP also has partnerships with thousands of customers to tap into stored energy in their water heaters or reduce electricity flow through their EV chargers when power demand is high. … . During the hours of peak demand, this helped GMP offset approximately 17,600 pounds of carbon, the equivalent of not using about 910 gallons of gasoline.
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