Swell Energy to manage Sacramento utility SMUD’s virtual power plant

LinkedIn
Twitter
Reddit
Facebook
Email

Virtual power plant (VPP) specialist Swell Energy will aggregate home solar and battery systems in a new programme from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD).

SMUD’s My Energy Optimizer Partner+ programme, a residential customer-driven VPP initiative, will launch enrolments in quarter one this year and start operations in April. The initiative will allow customers to have their systems’ operated in combination with others in return for both upfront and ongoing compensation.

There are around 600 customer-sited energy storage systems in SMUD’s service area and another 400 in the interconnection process, Swell said. Home battery capacity generally ranges from a few kWh to 10kWh at the higher end.

Suleman Khan, CEO of Swell Energy, said: “Our collaborative virtual power plant will provide real-time energy management and synchronised battery dispatch across SMUD’s customer base, enabling large-scale renewable deployment and minimising the need for conventional power plants in the region. We believe this model is a beacon for how municipal utilities and other publicly owned utilities can achieve scale and value with distributed energy resources.”

This article requires Premium SubscriptionBasic (FREE) Subscription

Enjoy 12 months of exclusive analysis

Not ready to commit yet?
  • Regular insight and analysis of the industry’s biggest developments
  • In-depth interviews with the industry’s leading figures
  • Annual digital subscription to the PV Tech Power journal
  • Discounts on Solar Media’s portfolio of events, in-person and virtual

Or continue reading this article for free

SMUD is a community-owned not-for-profit utility serving the city of Sacramento, the capital of California. It was recently in the headlines of the energy storage world after a bold multi-year agreement with iron electrolyte flow battery company ESS Inc for the latter to deploy up to 2,000MWh of its systems in its service area.

Swell’s deal with the utility comes a few months after it secured US$120 million in funding from investors including Softbank Vision Fund 2 towards its VPP programmes across the US, covered by Energy-Storage.news at the time. The company has been developing and productising its VPP solutions offering since 2015.

See CEO Khan’s interview with Energy-Storage.news from April 2021 here and all coverage from across developments in the VPP space here.

Energy-Storage.news’ publisher Solar Media will host the 5th Energy Storage Summit USA, 28-29 March 2023 in Austin, Texas. Featuring a packed programme of panels, presentations and fireside chats from industry leaders focusing on accelerating the market for energy storage across the country. For more information, go to the website.

Read Next

August 29, 2025
Potentia Energy, a joint venture co-owned by Enel Green Power and INPEX, has secured the first environmental approval for a grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) under South Australia’s new Hydrogen and Renewable Energy (HRE) Act.
Premium
August 28, 2025
Energy-Storage.news Premium speaks with Sergio Melendez, storage sector manager at CAISO, and Ali Karimian, market optimisation director at GridBeyond, about regulating Bid Cost Recovery Payments in the California Independent System Operator market.
August 28, 2025
California utility Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has pushed back recommissioning of the Elkhorn battery energy storage system (BESS) by approximately one year, to 30 June 2026.
Premium
August 27, 2025
Following in the footsteps of several other US jurisdictions this year, officials at California’s Orange County are one step closer to amending zoning laws to allow the development of BESS. 
August 27, 2025
Three companies, Pacifico Energy, Zenith Volts, and Fermi America have begun expanding power generation and energy storage capabilities for US data centre development.

Most Popular

Email Newsletter