The identities of the system integrators and project details are protected by customer non-disclosure agreements, but Ideal Power expects to make joint announcements on specific customer installations when they are operational. These system integrators are early market leaders in what is anticipated to be a large and rapidly growing market for commercial BESS.
The State of California requires at least 1.3GW of energy storage to be procured by 2020, a part of which will be behind-the-meter commercial installations. The commercial energy storage systems can be used to store energy locally, on site, to help businesses offset peak demand — when their energy use is at its highest during the day — through improved energy management.
The systems are designed to release energy during their peak load periods, significantly reducing the demand portion of their monthly utility bills. Peak demand rates from California’s investor owned utilities have increased an average of 45 percent over the past five years, and can represent over 50 percent of the monthly utility bill.
"We believe these orders demonstrate the unique advantages and competitiveness of our products when integrated into distributed storage systems to solve the growing industry need to lower commercial demand charges and satisfy the California mandate," said Dan Brdar, Chief Executive Officer of Ideal Power. "We anticipate that the attractive financial return on these systems to commercial building owners will fuel rapid growth, and accelerate the wide adoption of commercial energy storage systems."
Ideal Power’s 30kW battery converter offers high efficiency in a compact, modular and an easy-to-install solution that can improve the economics for energy storage applications. It is based on the company’s patented Power Packet Switching Architecture (PPSA) that provides electrical isolation without the use of a bulky and expensive transformer.
