AutoGrid Flex platform to help Sunrun manage a growing fleet of residential batteries for grid services

California — AutoGrid announced a partnership with Sunrun to provide AutoGrid Flex™ Virtual Power Plant (VPP) software to help manage Sunrun’s growing fleet of residential batteries across the United States.

Under the announced partnership, Sunrun will use features of the AutoGrid Flex platform to help manage its fleet of Brightbox rechargeable solar batteries and offer new, innovative grid services and energy management solutions. The cloud-based platform enhances Sunrun’s ability to work with utilities and other electricity providers to optimize and dispatch its storage fleet for the maximum economic benefit of both customers and the grid.

“Rooftop solar and batteries are helping households power through uncertainty. AutoGrid will enhance our capabilities to offer utilities an aggregated fleet of home solar and battery resources to make the electric grid cleaner and more resilient, while reducing costs for all energy consumers,” said Lynn Jurich, CEO, and co-founder of Sunrun.

Sunrun is at the leading edge of the transition to a cleaner, more resilient and local electricity system by using rooftop solar and residential batteries to extend grid services to electric utilities and other energy providers. In May, Sunrun announced that the company maintains $50 million in grid services revenue that’s been either contracted or in the pipeline, with projects in New England, California and Hawaii.

These grid services revenues not only help lower the cost of energy storage systems for customers, they also help lower the overall cost of operating the grid by avoiding and deferring expensive infrastructure upgrades and reducing the need to purchase cost-prohibitive peak power. This benefits all electric consumers, including those who are not directly participating in these programs, and significantly reduces the usage of fossil fuel power plants.

With over 5,000 MW of assets under contract, and experience of managing distributed energy resources (DERs) in 12 countries, AutoGrid is the leading provider of flexibility management solutions globally. AutoGrid Flex is ranked as the #1 Virtual Power Plant Platform in the world according to the global ranking published in 2020 by industry-leading research and analysis firm Guidehouse (formerly, Navigant Research).

“As economies are coming back from lockdowns imposed by COVID-19, we are seeing increased societal demand for sustainable energy along with significant demand for cloud-based digital solutions that improve efficiency of operations and competitiveness for energy companies addressing this demand,” said Amit Narayan, Founder & CEO, AutoGrid. “We are honored to be partnering with Sunrun, a true trailblazer in this industry, to work towards our common mission of accelerating access to new energy around the world.”