Connected Residential Communities with Enhanced Resiliency and both Customer and Utility Attributes

Location:
Menifee, CA
This project represents two residential communities that will integrate existing commercial technology including nested microgrids, will be all-electric and meet DOE zero energy ready homes criteria. An important goal for this project is to demonstrate reliability and resilience, cost-effectiveness, and benefits to customers and the utility from Connected Community microgrids. The planned community-scale battery will serve to support both Connected Communities in island mode to meet critical loads and also potentially provide a service to the grid during extreme weather events with up to 500 kW available to the utility. The team hopes to demonstrate a shift from natural gas end-uses to high efficiency all-electric technologies.
Illustrative Schematic of Project
Illustrative Schematic of Project
Team Lead
SunPower Corporation

Partners: KB Homes, University of California Irvine, Schneider Electric, and Southern California Edison

Planned Location of Buildings: Menifee, CA

Building types: 230+ new single-family homes

New or retrofit buildings: New residential construction

EE target: 38-57% (with shift from natural-gas end-uses like heating, hot water, cooking and drying to high-efficiency all-electric technology)

Total load: 1.0-1.2 MW peak demand for 2 communities representing 2.6 GWh electricity demand

DERs planned: rooftop PV (5-7kW each or 1.4MW total), community energy storage (CES) battery (1 MW/2 MWh), residential energy storage battery units (RESU) (6.8 kW /13 kWh per home), EV charging infrastructure (EVCI).

Flexible Loads: provision of 200-700kW of flexible loads in the form of heating ventilation and air conditioning, water heaters, EVs (including possible bidirectional flow), smart appliances (dishwashers, washer/dryer)

Grid issues addressed: variable renewable energy integration, resilience with coordinated islanding, & avoided capital investment at the grid (T&D)

Grid services planned: capacity relief from demand response, emergency load transfer capability, voltage and frequency regulation, as well as exploring possible participation in California ISO day-ahead real-time and ancillary service markets with DERs >500kW

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