Stem and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) have launched a pilot project that will study the impact of large amounts of solar photovoltaics on the electric grid.
During the first phase of the project, Stem and SMUD will work with residential and commercial customer volunteers from a solar-powered community to install Stem's PowerMonitor data-collection and analysis system in order to examine the impact of a high penetration of PV on distribution circuit power quality. The data collected by Stem will inform SMUD of the amount of PV that can be added to a distribution feeder while maintaining grid stability and power quality.
These results will determine the effects of the second-by-second ramp rates of PV on SMUD's system and examine how distributed storage can be used to mitigate these effects.
Later on, SMUD may also deploy Stem's distributed storage systems to test the potential for automatic, fast-responding distributed storage to improve power quality for customers on circuits with a high penetration of PV.
