San Diego Gas & Electric to incorporate residential solar power into grid

As private roof-mounted solar panels become ever more popular, those solar owners are increasingly turning to batteries to store excess energy produced, a trend that has the potential to change the utilities market as we know it.

Today, more than 784,000 U.S. homes are powered by the sun. That represents an untapped opportunity for utility providers to shore up their grids, bolstered by solar batteries.

San Diego Gas & Electric is now going forward with a new model to take advantage of the stored-energy potential of those solar batteries. The utility company plans to test a new type of business model with residential customers that will hook up their solar batteries to the local grid.

The utility company first plans to aggregate the power stored up in those residential solar batteries to support weaker spots in the grid at times when demand for electricity rises. After some testing with that method, San Diego Gas & Electric could roll out the program across the company’s entire grid system.

The aggregated power from the solar batteries would also help the investor-owned utility ease some pressure on delivering electricity while they upgrade and maintain weak sections of the grid.

Adding residential solar batteries in San Diego represents one of the first plans to incorporate privately-produced solar energy into the overall electrical grid in the U.S., and may mark a turning point in the business model for utility providers across the nation.