Utah company granted commercial energy storage approval
The program allows residential and commercial customers to let Rocky Mountain Power manage qualified solar and battery setups while also providing the customer with an up-front enrollment incentive and ongoing bill credits.
"Commercial-scale energy storage is a necessary piece of the grid of the future, and Torus' solutions have demonstrated their ability to integrate within the Wattsmart battery ecosystem," Bill Comeau, vice president of customer experience and innovation at Rocky Mountain Power, said in a statement. "The Wattsmart program creates a more flexible and resilient grid while saving customers money, and Torus has proven their innovative systems can deliver."
The approval builds on a January memorandum of understanding between the power company and Torus to develop a 70-megawatt demand response initiative capable of powering the equivalent of approximately 20,000 homes using Torus' Nova technologies.
And both of Torus' recent dealings with Rocky Mountain Power fall into Utah Gov. Spencer Cox's initiative to double the state's power production over the next decade.
"This energy storage partnership is a great example of Utah's leadership in innovative energy solutions," Cox said in a statement. "As we double our power production capacity over the next decade through Operation Gigawatt, we're making sure Utah continues to be a net energy exporter. This collaboration between Rocky Mountain Power and Torus demonstrates how we'll achieve these ambitious goals."
Last week's certification enables commercial and industrial customers to harness Torus' energy storage solutions, providing critical capabilities including power quality management, uninterruptible power supply with sub-250 millisecond failover (a system designed to switch over to a backup or standby system within 250 milliseconds in case of a primary system failure), long-duration backup and on-site generation integration with automated dispatching.
"We made sure that Torus' systems met the highest technical and operational standards. This certification represents a major step forward in embedding energy storage as a core asset in the modern grid," Dave Rackham, CXO of embedded systems at Torus, said in a statement.
The approval from Rocky Mountain Power positions Torus to scale commercial solar deployment across the entirety of PacifiCorp's territory, helping businesses reduce energy costs and improve grid resilience while also providing more sustainable energy for the future.
'Being one of only two approved commercial battery providers by Wattsmart is a testament to our relentless focus on quality, performance and grid-scale impact,' Nate Walkingshaw, CEO and co-founder of Torus, said in a statement. 'This milestone reinforces our commitment to pioneering energy storage solutions that deliver real value to businesses and the grid alike.'
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