San Diego Community Power says solar-plus-storage program approved 1,600 projects, enrolled batteries for 7.4 MW of controllable capacity

San Diego Community Power reported that its solar-plus-storage incentive program approved more than 1,600 projects and enrolled about 2,200 batteries across the agency’s service area, agency staff said at the Jan. 16, 2025 Community Advisory Committee meeting.

The program, which launched July 29, 2024, stopped accepting applications on Nov. 8 after funding was fully allocated. “To date we’ve paid the upfront incentive on over 500 projects, about 30% of the projects have already been paid out,” said Emily Fisher, senior program manager. Fisher said the program’s average incentive was about $6,800 and that roughly 40% of incentives went to customers qualifying as CARE/FERA or living in identified communities of concern.

Staff emphasized the scale and speed of adoption as measures of success. Fisher said the program enrolled about 7.4 megawatts of battery capacity that Community Power can dispatch in its demand-response windows; she estimated total installed battery capacity resulting from the program is roughly double that figure because many customers enrolled only a portion of their battery for agency control. “We found the majority of customers were participating 50% or 60%,” Fisher said.

Contractor participation was broad: staff approved 50 contractors, about 77% of whom actively participated. Fisher said 37% of participating contractors were diverse business enterprises and 4% were union-affiliated. One contractor reported that the program produced more battery sales for them in the program period than in the prior five years.

The agency reported preliminary operational data from manufacturers showing aggregated charging and discharging patterns during December test windows. One example Fisher shared, provided by a manufacturer, showed aggregated discharge during the two-hour evening window reaching about 1 MW across roughly 180 aggregated systems on several days between Dec. 16–20. Fisher said the agency expects to exceed the 5 MW commitment it made to the California Energy Commission for virtual power plant capacity.

Staff said they are collecting quarterly operational data from manufacturers and contractors, have distributed surveys to collect customer and contractor feedback, and plan a program evaluation this quarter. They also said they are evaluating a possible nonresidential pilot and will continue to look for ways to diversify participating battery manufacturers and contractor outreach.

The committee members praised the program’s pace and called for ongoing metrics on monthly performance of individual systems and the share of enrolled battery capacity that would not have been installed without the incentive. Fisher said the program is currently collecting quarterly data and will have finer-grained monthly metrics once systems are integrated into the agency’s virtual-peaker control platform.

The presentation concluded with questions about federal tax treatment for participants and program timelines. Fisher said eligibility for federal investment tax credits and related incentives generally depends on project completion and final inspection; for projects not yet completed those benefits would typically be realized in the tax year when the project is completed and paid in full.

Staff said they will continue to report data to the CAC and that the Department of Energy recently included the program as a case study in a national virtual power plant report.