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Sunrun is the largest residential solar company in the US and they pioneered ‘solar as a service.’ They are on pace to install 800 MW of solar in 2023. That’s an astounding 10 percent of the US residential solar market. Today on the Clean Power Hour, solar policy, batteries, and grid flexibility with Amy Heart, Vice President of Policy at Sunrun. Amy Heart has been a pioneer in renewable energy for over 20 years. She got her start volunteering with the Midwest Renewable Energy Association (MREA) in the late 1990s, helping build the solar industry in the Midwest. After working with MREA and the City of Milwaukee on solar programs, Amy went to law school and 8 years ago joined Sunrun, the nation's largest residential solar and storage provider.
In this episode, Amy discusses Sunrun's mission to make solar energy accessible through financing options like leasing and loans. This allows more homeowners to go solar with little to no upfront costs. With over 800,000 customers (yes, 800,000), Sunrun has deployed a significant amount of the nation's residential solar. Now with the growth of energy storage, Sunrun is rapidly expanding into solar + storage installations. Nearly all new solar in California is paired with batteries due to changes to net metering policies.
Amy shares insights into emerging state solar markets like Illinois, Texas, and Florida. She discusses the importance of foundational policies like net metering to provide market stability. Amy also talks about the shift from net metering to the value of solar tariffs and how that impacts the value proposition of storage. She highlights the huge opportunity for virtual power plants to aggregate distributed batteries and provide grid services.
If you are interested in virtual power plants, residential solar, energy storage, or renewable energy policy, be sure to listen to this episode with Sunrun's Amy Heart!
Key Takeaways
1. What impact are changes to net metering policies having on the solar + storage market?
2. Which states are emerging as hot new solar markets and why?
3. What solar policies are needed to enable the distributed energy future?
4. How can virtual power plants leverage distributed solar + storage to benefit the grid?
5. How did Sunrun become the leader in residential solar and what is their business model?
https://www.sunrun.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/amyheart/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/sunrun/
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