Energy storage virtual power plant (VPP) provider Sonnen is partnering with Abundance Energy and Energywell Technology Licensing to develop a battery-enabled VPP in Texas, US.
Abundance Energy is a utility based in Lubbock, Texas. Energywell Technology Licensing is an energy technology company based in Green Farms, Connecticut.
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Abundance Energy customers can use sonnenConnect residential battery installations to support grid stability and lower electricity costs.
The VPP is set to have a capacity of 60MWh with the current enrolled customer base. Sonnen says this will grow each month.
Speaking with Energy-Storage.news, Blake Richetta, CEO of Sonnen, said the SOLRITE Abundance VPP will be larger than the Tesla VPP in Texas by mid-2026.
“It is highly scalable. It is unlike any other sonnen VPP in the country, as it is based entirely on the deregulated Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) market,” Richetta said.
Sonnen says the VPP will be optimised by integrating Energywell’s Proton platform with Sonnen’s VPP battery control technology.
Each battery will be continuously managed in response to market price signals, customer use and solar generation. When networked together, the individual batteries create a VPP.
Richetta specified that while Abundance Energy services Lubbock, Texas, the VPP programme covers all of the ERCOT market, focusing on Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston.
This is because Abundance customers are not the target of the programme; rather, the programme is targeting existing SOLRITE Sonnen customers. Richetta specified:
“For now, the target is the existing network of SOLRITE Sonnen customers, who are ready to sign up with a SOLRITE Sonnen-approved retailer, of which Abundance is the only one for the time being. There are over 3,000+ of these customers ready to sign up now with Abundance and over 5,000 additional customers committed to SOLRITE.”
This programme is an extension of the VPP programme launched earlier this year, in which SOLRITE Energy and Sonnen combined SOLRITE solar panels with Sonnen batteries.
There has been a recent string of VPP programme announcements.
In March, three VPP programmes were announced in California and Colorado and US residential solar installer Sunrun recently announced its California VPP more than quadrupled in size from 2024.
Since publication, this article has been updated to reflect SOLRITE and Sonnen’s ongoing collaboration.
