Sunnova Energy International Inc. has partnered with David Energy, a software-driven retail energy provider in Texas, to bring its Adaptive Retail energy plan to the Texas marketplace.
The Adaptive Retail energy plan uses Sunnova SunSafe solar and battery storage systems to create a virtual power plant (VPP) that optimizes the interactions of the fleet with the electric grid. By aggregating the battery storage and generation capacity of its customers, Sunnova can provide a more reliable and flexible source of energy that can respond to changes in demand and market conditions, the company says.
Sunnova and David Energy will use their distributed energy resource management software to optimize their customers’ distributed energy resources (DERs) and create a VPP in Texas. Sunnova’s fleet of batteries will react in real time to David Energy’s platform, which dispatches the fleet based on the price of energy in the wholesale market.
David Energy’s platform will also allow these DERs to integrate the value of demand response and bid their capacity into Electric Reliability Council of Texas’s (ERCOT) ancillary markets for the creation of the lowest energy rates for Sunnova’s customers.
“Our Adaptive Retail plan represents a significant departure from the traditional centralized power generation model, putting more control and flexibility in the hands of our customers,” says William J. (John) Berger, CEO of Sunnova.
“By combining a retail energy plan with software that connects to a broad range of devices many customers already have, David Energy’s platform can turn Texans’ homes into power plants,” adds James McGinniss, CEO and founder of David Energy. “The potential to bring hundreds of megawatts of much needed flexible capacity to ERCOT via these VPPs in the near future is very real.”
