Sonnen, SOLRITE, & ADAPT Energy, Integrating VPP Breakers to Turn Home Loads into Flexible Grid Assets

Support CleanTechnica’s work through a Substack subscription, on Patreon, or on Stripe. Help us produce all of the high-quality, original content we publish week after week despite the challenges of content-scraping AI, antisocial media, inflation, and other hurdles.

SOLRITE Unveils Next-Gen Virtual Power Plant Node with sonnen and ADAPT Energy, Integrating VPP Breakers to Turn Home Loads into Flexible Grid Assets

ADAPT Energy’s control of VPP breakers will add dispatchable load flexibility to the SOLRITE sonnen VPP, while paving a simpler, faster, and lower-cost path to whole-home backup

SOLRITE, a company specializing in developing, financing, and owning Virtual Power Plant Agreement (VPA) projects, together with Sonnen, a leader in Virtual Power Plant energy storage technology, announced they will now digitally integrate VPP smart breakers, managed by ADAPT Energy, into the SOLRITE  sonnen VPP. The integration marks the next evolution of sonnen and SOLRITE’s industry-leading partnership in VPP innovation, expanding beyond battery storage by transforming residential electrical loads into flexible, dispatchable grid assets for both the VPP and smart backup power applications.

Unlike traditional approaches to whole-home backup, often requiring hard-wired circuit relocation, including exclusive loads panels, the newly expanded VPP Node combines the sonnenHub with ADAPT Energy’s VPP smart breaker technology to intelligently manage major household loads. This creates a more streamlined approach to whole-home backup while unlocking an entirely new source of flexibility for the SOLRITE sonnen VPP. With homeowner permission, the VPP smart breaker—controlled by ADAPT Energy—can also participate in on-grid VPP events, enabling the same electrical infrastructure to be flexible for both backup and grid participation.

“Our work with ADAPT Energy is a meaningful step forward in how we think about residential battery storage and VPP participation,” said Regan George, CEO and Founder of SOLRITE Energy. “We have already demonstrated the tremendous value of connecting sonnen batteries together as a pooled grid asset. Now, we’re going inside the home and unlocking another layer of flexibility that has been sitting there all along. By combining the battery with additional load management made possible by the VPP smart breaker technology, we’re creating a more valuable node for the grid while also giving homeowners a clever backup solution.”

The Next Generation of Whole-Home Backup

The integration addresses one of the longstanding challenges of whole-home backup: how to provide broad electrical coverage without having large household loads drain available battery capacity too quickly or cause the nano-grid to immediately fail after an off-grid transition due to excessive inrush current. With the newly expanded VPP smart breaker technology digitally integrated with the sonnen ecosystem, the system can intelligently shed large loads without requiring those circuits to be relocated. ADAPT Energy keeps the smart breakers synchronized with the sonnen battery during backup mode and automatically restores the breakers when grid power returns. This significantly reduces installation complexity and tedious inspections for installers, allowing crews to complete more jobs per week.

For homeowners, the system provides the convenience of a whole-home electrical configuration that intelligently manages the loads that have the greatest impact on backup duration. This work is all done in the background, meaning homeowners do not have to worry about resetting individual circuits during an outage. Instead, participating homes will see more value from their VPA program in the form of an enhanced backup power experience. Furthermore, at any time in the future, if a homeowner is interested in altering which of their VPP smart breaker-controlled loads are shed during an outage, the process to make such a change is quick and easy, requiring no electrical reconfiguration.

“This is about making whole-home backup work the way homeowners expect it to,” said Troy Morgan, President of PanTech Design, the developer of ADAPT Energy. “Instead of putting the pressure on homeowners to change the way their home is wired and to manually manipulate loads during an outage, we’re putting intelligence into their energy system, which provides a seamless and automatic backup power experience for their home. Our technology empowers home loads to supply optimal backup power during an outage or provide valuable flexibility to the grid.”

Smart Breakers as Grid Flexibility

The permission-based architecture aligns the interests of the homeowner, battery owner and utility. The real opportunity comes when homeowners choose to opt in to allow the breakers to participate in on-grid VPP events.

When a VPP event is dispatched, the sonnen battery can discharge or charge in concert with direct load shedding via ADAPT. ADAPT Energy will strictly shed pre-approved household loads, and by using Eaton AbleEdge breakers, ADAPT achieves this right where the breaker sits, without relocation. A customer who has opted to include a pool pump, for example, can have that load temporarily turned off while the sonnen battery is discharging to the grid. That way, the VPP can respond through both energy stored in the battery and energy that would have otherwise been consumed by the home, thereby increasing the dispatched injection into the grid, by the VPP.

“With the addition of ADAPT Energy’s VPP smart-breaker technology to the SOLRITE–sonnen ecosystem, we are expanding the virtual power plant from a battery-centered resource into a fully orchestrated home-energy platform,” said Blake Richetta, Chairman and CEO of sonnen Inc. “By synchronizing energy that has been harnessed in our battery with intelligent, real-time control of household electrical loads, we can deliver more flexible, responsive capacity to the grid precisely when it is needed most. This integration materially strengthens the value of SOLRITE’s virtual power plant—supporting grid reliability, creating greater customer value, and enabling SOLRITE to continue delivering industry-leading solar-plus-storage VPA solutions to homeowners.”

Press release from www.sonnenusa.com