Generac’s grid services business has been selected for a $50 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for a project aimed at improving the power grid’s ability to handle the electrification of building thermal systems.
The grant funding will be used to offer around 2,000 lower income residents in Massachusetts a combination of home battery systems, WiFi thermostats paird with heat pubs, and hot water heater load control switches.
Town of Genesee-based Generac’s distributed energy resource management system will then be used to send control signals to the equipment to minimize and optimize potential impact of the new heating and transportation electrification loads on the grid. The Generac technology would also aggregate and manage the energy assets as a virtual power plant.
“We’d like to thank the DOE for this opportunity and look forward to working with the state and our partners to lead the evolution to more resilient, efficient and sustainable energy solutions for the residents of Massachusetts,” said Aaron Jagdfeld, president and chief executive officer of Generac.
The grant is part of the Grid Resilience and Innovation Partnerships program and was funded through the bipartisan infrastructure law.
Another $53 million for the project will come from a Massachusetts program called MassSaves that will provide incentives for electric heat pump installations. a
Potential outcomes of the project include optimizing the fleet of batteries to reduce demand during peak hours, absorbing excess solar production during light load conditions, increasing the use of solar energy, providing job training, and development of a replicable model for use around the country.
Generac is collaborating with the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, Fraunhofer USA, Action for Boston Community Development, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center and utilities.
The first batteries are expected to deployed in late 2024 or early 2025.
