– Dr. Aparna Deshpande
All future commercial structures in California should now mandatorily have solar power plus energy storage . The new building codes are being amended in California and has become the first state to impose these standards. The California Clean Energy Commission (CEC) unanimously voted and decided as per the guidelines mentioned in the 2022 Build Energy Efficiency Standards. As per the commission these regulations may add 280 MW of annual solar capacity along with 400 MWh of energy storage. The specifications for the solar plus storage systems includes primarily a technical requirement that the solar portion should be sized to meet a target of 60% of the structure’s loads. Also 10% reduction in the electricity exports of the total solar generation is targeted. As per the new commercial requirements all future residential constructions must also be battery backed up. For this to implement the new homes must be equipped with a 225-amp busbar. Two circuits out of four, one of refrigerator and other one of bedroom should be backed up circuits with receptible outlets. A subpanel or a split-bus main panel for these circuits is also obligatory. The batteries with at least 5 kWh should have a round trip efficiency of more than 80 % and 70% nameplate capacity remaining after 10 years (warrantied) or 4,000 cycles. These battery systems should be capable of programming remotely in different modes. The only motivation of the state being this programmability is to harmonize the distributed energy storage with power grid. The solar power is to be coupled with the battery system in many of these programmable modes. As per the basic control mode both battery and solar modes should be synergic with each other to manage the onsite load. The next mode Time of use mode will have batteries programmed to charge by solar power only. This charged batteries should be use at the highest priced time of the day. The systems will be capable of programming for minimum three times of the usage seasons. The last level will be the Advanced Demand Response Flexibility Control programmability. As per the state this kind of storage will be capable of interchanging the charge and discharge periods as per the signals from the local utility or a third-party aggregator. Millions of revenues are earned by California with the help of Ohm Connect company by using this type of systems by managing energy demands during the grid events. These technical capabilities are also being adopted by big Companies like Sunrun, Tesla, Sonnen. This new regulation is a part of the intricate but widespread form of solar-focused, clean energy in California. Also, this regulation will have a prominent decrease in the price of new construction domestic solar power. This will help California in achieving its net zero carbon foot print goal by 2045 which will subsequently result in carbon negative footprint in the following years
Please see the following news Source(s) and original reference(s) therein: (Source : pv-magazine-usa.com)
