SALT LAKE CITY — The first residents of an all-electric and energy efficient community — the largest battery demand response project in the United States — are settling into new apartments. Their cars are tucked neatly beneath solar panel covers and their electric cars can plug into charging ports. Inside each apartment in the Soleil Lofts development, a Sonnen battery is humming silently close to their living room.
The residents sign on knowing their backup power can be controlled by the utility and dispatched to the grid as needed. The circular logo on the Sonnen system will turn green to tell residents when the battery’s power is being used by the local utility, Rocky Mountain Power.
The full complex will be finished in the next two years, but the virtual power plant established when the first building opened is a blueprint for developments outside of Utah, according to the real estate developer Wasatch Group.
The Soleil Lofts apartments, under construction in Herriman, Utah, seeks to attract environmentally conscious customers who want to hasten the transition to all-electric and clean energy living. The project represents a collaboration among Rocky Mountain Power, battery developer Sonnen, solar developer Auric Energy and Wasatch. All the partners have plans for modeling the success of the Soleil projects.
“[T]he long term thing for us is how do we provide battery solutions for our customers?”
Bill Comeau
Managing director of customer innovations, Rocky Mountain Power
The effort is an opportunity for the Pacificorp subsidiary to work with a partner that has experience with energy storage, as the utility learns to better integrate batteries into the grid and enable growth from renewables, according to Bill Comeau, Rocky Mountain Power’s managing director of customer innovations.
When complete, the planned community’s 22 buildings will have 600 apartment units with 12.6 MWh of battery storage, 5.2 MW of solar panels, 150 stalls of EV chargers and an overriding focus on energy efficiency. Utility access to the 600 Sonnen batteries will turn the complex into a grid resource.
“In the big scheme of things, it’s actually really small,” Comeau told Utility Dive. “But the long term thing for us is how do we provide battery solutions for our customers?”
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