Generac customers can sell power to grid
Generac Power Systems said Wednesday that its line of home standby generators, commercial and industrial generators, and PWRcell solar + battery storage systems are being manufactured and offered as “Smart Grid Ready,” allowing customers to more easily sell power back to the grid and offset their energy costs.
The smart grid ready capabilities are being offered through Generac’s Enbala Concerto platform.
“Through this integration, Generac customers – residential, commercial, industrial and solar – are now capable of making major contributions to grid reliability, resiliency and sustainability,” Aaron Jagdfeld, president and chief executive officer of Waukesha-based Generac said in a statement.
“In addition to the peace of mind that they’re receiving from Generac products, customers have the opportunity to obtain additional return on investment by leveraging their Generac units to contribute energy to the grid, support grid stability and receive payment for their excess power,” Jagdfeld said in the statement.
With the new platform, Generac’s Smart Grid Ready products become distributed energy resources, which seamlessly form virtual power plants – collections of distributed energy resources capable of augmenting the grid services provided by traditional power generation, Generac said in a statement.
“The distributed energy resources still function as traditional power backup devices, powering the home or business in the event of a power outage, but they can now also enable the sale of power back to the grid in times of peak demand, reducing the amount of strain on the grid and offsetting a portion of asset owners’ monthly energy expenses,” the company said in the statement.
“Through this new offering, Generac is proud to have the most comprehensive, end-to-end solution – one that combines solar, battery storage, generators and load management,” said Russ Minick, president of Generac’s Energy Technology business group and chief marketing officer. “We’ve taken segmented energy assets that would normally be complicated to connect and brought them together in a seamless fashion.”
Current PWRcell and home standby generator customers will also be able to access Generac’s Concerto platform through a firmware update. The update will provide existing users with all the same distributed energy resources capabilities that will arrive standard on new products.
Generac’s Enbala Concerto real-time energy-balancing platform “gives energy retailers and utilities the flexibility to operate in real-time and to better manage the escalating complexities of increasingly variable energy assets.”