Calibrant, a Macquarie Asset Management portfolio company, has energised and begun generating Value of Distributed Energy Resources (VDER) credits from three front-of-the-meter battery energy storage systems (BESS) in New York, US.
Situated throughout Westchester County, these systems use US-manufactured batteries to provide a total of 13.5MW/55.7MWh of dispatchable capacity to the Con Edison grid.
The three systems were originally developed by New Leaf Energy, which was spun off and sold from solar and energy storage developer Borrego to energy transition investor ECP in 2022.
The VDER tariff, also known as the Value Stack, distributes values based on energy, capacity, environmental benefits, demand reduction, and locational system relief. The New York Public Service Commission (PSC) offers compensation through bill credits.
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Calibrant states that the Westchester portfolio is vital in stabilising the grid, particularly during peak summer demand, when electricity costs are highest and maintaining grid reliability is essential.
The company will be compensated for the projects through VDER bill credits, offsetting utility bills.
Calibrant further highlights the uniqueness of the Westchester projects, saying that they allow large commercial and industrial (C&I) customers to take part in the financial benefits of distributed energy resources (DERs) without hosting any infrastructure on-site.
Additionally, 100% of the off-take was secured through direct agreements with C&I customers, including data centre operator CoreSite and an unnamed large hospital institution.
Each project site owner gets annual lease payments over 20 years, transforming, as Calibrant says, “underused land into a stable income stream”. The battery systems additionally generate local taxes, helping fund municipal budgets and essential public services.
Notably, Calibrant received support from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) Retail Storage Incentive programme and the Westchester County and Mount Pleasant Industrial Development Agencies.
NYSERDA’s programme was launched in April and offers a total of US$775 million for energy storage projects. It was authorised by the New York State PSC in a June 2024 order.
Recently, New York announced the opening of applications for the state’s inaugural competitive process to develop a gigawatt of grid-connected energy storage facilities. State Governor Kathy Hochul introduced the first of three Bulk Energy Storage requests for proposals (RfPs) on 28 July.
Phil Martin, CEO at Calibrant, said of its three recently energised BESS:
“Limited physical space at some customer sites can make on-site energy solution infeasible. In this case, we delivered an off-site configuration that still drives meaningful savings, a testament to our ability to find and deliver significant value, no matter the circumstances.”
Calibrant was founded to serve the North American market for onsite power solutions as a service in 2020, as a joint venture between Macquarie’s Green Investment Group and German engineering company Siemens. Siemens has since exited the venture, and it is solely owned by Macquarie Asset Management.
Calibrant acquired Enel DES, the US distributed energy storage arm of Italian utility Enel’s digital energy arm Enel X, last year. Enel DES was established after Enel Green Energy’s acquisition of a C&I energy storage pioneer, Demand Energy, in 2017.
This article has been amended from its original form to accurately reflect Calibrant’s ownership structure and to add further background context to the story.
