The colonization of American grid innovation by European utilities has advanced with remarkable speed.
A promising U.S. energy startup, tackling such problems as energystorage EV charging or demand response, is more likely to find its way into the hands of Enel, Engie, Innogy or E.ON than their U.S. counterparts. This allows the Europeans to test out future business models far from their home markets, with negligible risk of cannibalizing their own core businesses.
Groupe EDF, which runs the electricity system in France and develops renewables around the world, has taken an inquisitive but less acquisitive approach to mining the U.S. energy sector.
It bought Maryland-based* groSolar in 2016 and turned that into the New World distributed development arm of its Renewable Energy practice. This past year it expanded that team with a new Distributed Energy and Storage unit, making use of the Store & Forecast software developed in France.
As a result, the company responsible for massive grid storage to balance France’s nuclear fleet has moved into distributed, behind-the-meter storage in the U.S.
Earlier this month, EDF won a 10-megawatt/40-megawatt-hour contract with Pacific Gas & Electric. If approved by regulators, EDF will tap a group of commercial customers to host batteries to fulfill the utility’s resource adequacy obligation, while generating savings for the customers.
This was not an obvious or guaranteed chain of events, but EDF determined that there’s a market for distributed storage that it cannot afford to ignore.
“Jumping over the fence and getting behind the meter comes from solar,” said Raphael Declercq, vice president of portfolio strategy at EDF Renewable Energy. “It was really a realization that customers were interested in this and there could be a very substantial reduction in their energy costs in some places.”
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