Significant funding opens new avenues of collaboration between dcbel and other next-generation residential energy companies.
MONTREAL – Smart home energy company dcbel is proud to have been selected to receive the largest tranche of funding under the Responsive, Easy Charging Products With Dynamic Signals (REDWDS) competitive grant solicitation, administered by the California Energy Commission’s (CEC’s) Clean Transportation Program. The $52 million award will be used to accelerate the deployment of Home Energy Stations throughout California. To execute this project, dcbel will collaborate with a consortium of esteemed partners including UC Davis, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Southern California Edison, Sonoma Clean Power and Grid Alternatives.
REDWDS focused exclusively on funding solutions that help customers easily respond to dynamic grid signals and minimize charging and discharging costs, considerations that are playing an ever-larger role in the efficient management of home energy. dcbel’s vertically integrated end-to-end platform is uniquely equipped to manage both of these functions at scale and with broad interoperability, a key factor in the company’s ability to contribute to the REDWDS objectives.
dcbel’s patented technology includes:
- Home Energy Station (HES), the first residential bidirectional direct current (DC) electric vehicle (EV) charger in the US certified to UL 2231 and 9741 standards that doubles as a powerful solar and stationary battery inverter.
- Orchestrate, the HES’ grid edge computing platform that plans whether to use, store or sell energy.
- dcbel Chorus, a CSIP-certified, real-time technical aggregation IoT platform enabling affordable, easy and automatic residential energy production, storage and export. By supporting industry-leading protocols such as IEEE 2030.5 and OpenADR, Chorus forms the bedrock of the burgeoning residential energy ecosystem.
With minimal intervention, HES customers will find their EV charged and ready when they need it using the least costly energy source available. Importantly, the Home Energy Station is ready to serve even the most demanding residential energy prosumers from the get-go. Customers can subscribe seamlessly and safely to multiple energy programs provided by utilities, energy service providers, microgrids and virtual power plants through dcbel’s app-based platform. Customers looking to partake in vehicle-to-grid (V2G) incentives can browse among the providers available in the dcbel app hub, and are a tap away from enrolling and participating while maintaining complete control.
This revenue potential is bolstered by the promise of resilience in the face of blackouts that plague the nation’s aging energy grid. dcbel’s Home Energy Station can power homes through grid outages lasting multiple days by leveraging the massive amount of energy stored in an EV.
For increased independence, homeowners can connect solar panels and a home battery to the Home Energy Station and enjoy the compounded benefits of additional blackout power, cost savings and revenue opportunities provided by these assets.
“dcbel is committed to simplifying and electrifying smart home energy. This funding is a testament to that commitment,” said Dan Fletcher, dcbel’s Chief Business Development Officer. “Our all-in-one solution is ready to change the way homes interact with the grid and, crucially, allows people to make use of their EV’s energy for backup power and to discharge their EV battery to provide grid flexibility services.”