The surprisingly painless path to installing energy storage on site
By Scott Wilson, Director of Operations | May 17, 2017
Energy industry pundits are enthusiastic about the pace of adoption of behind-the-meter energy storage. Caveats about financing challenges or legislative uncertainty seem to have little effect on this vigorous upward trend.
However, some of the C&I facility managers we’ve spoken to don’t see energy storage installations through such rose-colored glasses. Anything that involves construction or utility interconnection is seen as a time sink for administrators, and a hardship for employees and patrons. This is especially significant in education, hospitality, or retail: Obstructed access, safety concerns, and loss of service can lead to public outcry, and facility managers aren’t keen on damaging their organization’s reputation.
In truth, deploying energy storage is a complex project, involving engineering, permitting, on-site installation, and utility interconnection. But most prospective energy storage customers would be pleasantly surprised to learn how little of this complexity impacts their resources and day-to-day facility operations.
Having conducted numerous energy storage deployments over the past six years, we have refined our procedures to minimize business impact. Customer involvement is typically limited to activities such as
- Providing site access for daily construction activities
- Scheduling a short (typically 1-4 hour) service shutdown for system connection (when most convenient)
- Providing material storage and laydown areas
- Apprising us of site-specific safety and security requirements (we handle background checks for personnel badging)
Green Charge and its partners coordinate and execute all permitting, construction, and installation, keeping customers abreast of the project status at weekly meetings. The installation itself is relatively fast, because every UL-listed enclosure is pre-built and thoroughly inspected before it arrives on site and can be set up on a concrete slab in a few days.
We comply with all regulatory and site-specific safety requirements for the transport and delivery of the hardware components. And Green Charge-qualified personnel install, test, and commission each energy storage system for successful interconnection at your site and with the public utility.
We conclude each project with a lessons-learned meeting to ensure that all parties are proud of the end result and happy with the experience. Here’s what a few of them have said:
Why not be the next one to be pleasantly surprised? Take advantage of our free site evaluation here.
