Partnership between Clean Energy Group, Geli to focus on solar+storage for low-income communities

Clean Energy Group, a national, nonprofit organization, will work with the energy storage control and monitoring software company, Geli, to help bring the benefits of solar PV with battery storage technologies to more low-income and otherwise disadvantaged communities. Using Geli’s new online energy storage and solar+storage design and assessment tool, ESyst, Clean Energy Group will provide free training and support to nonprofit organizations evaluating solar+storage solutions for low-income communities.

Through its Resilient Power Project, Clean Energy Group works to accelerate market development and deployment of solar+storage for affordable housing and critical community facilities in disadvantaged communities. Solar+storage can help strengthen these communities both through ensuring more reliable power to support critical services during extended power outages and to reduce the economic burden of rising energy costs. The goal of the work is to further clean energy equity by ensuring that all communities have equal access to the economic, health, and resiliency benefits that solar+storage technologies can provide.

“Our work with Geli will help to level the clean energy playing field in low-income communities,” said Seth Mullendore, a project director with Clean Energy Group. “With ESyst, we’ll be able to give communities the knowledge and free tools to explore solar+storage options without having to rely on proprietary industry models or expensive engineering firms. Low-income community leaders can use the tool to get a good understanding of the economics of a proposed project before reaching out to developers.”

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Geli announced the nationwide launch of ESyst in April. With access to over 10,000 electric rate tariffs across 1,300 U.S. utility service territories, ESyst was developed to standardize and simplify the process of sizing energy storage and solar+storage systems for commercial and industrial properties. The free online tool lets users perform in-depth site analyses in a matter of minutes – calculating both a property’s energy and demand charges savings over time. The tool allows users to select from multiple system options according to project needs, financial parameters, and supplier preferences, and includes functionality to download full financial pro formas and a detailed breakdown of how the system will generate value.

Clean Energy Group will host a free webinar with Geli to introduce ESyst and walk through an example of how to use the platform to analyze an affordable housing property on Thursday, May 24, at 1 p.m. EDT.

— Solar Builder magazine

[source: http://solarbuildermag.com/news/solarstorage-for-low-income-communities/]