Rocky Mountain Power’s Wattsmart Battery Program launched December 1, 2020, and is available to homes and businesses that either have or want to install an in-home or on-site battery storage system.
Currently the program is only available for customers with a rooftop solar system, or a rooftop solar system paired with a battery. If you don’t already have a battery, you can qualify for an upfront battery enrollment incentive of $150 per kW for each year that you commit to participate in the program. For example, if a residential customer enrolls a 6-kW battery for 4 years (the minimum annual commitment), their enrollment incentive will be $3,600 (6kW x $600). Additionally, every participant in the program, including those who already have a battery system, will earn $15/kW in an annual bill credit for each year they participate.
Benefits to the Larger Energy Grid
The Wattsmart Battery Incentive plays an important role in cleaning our electricity grid by creating grid flexibility and reliability in a new and innovative way. Rocky Mountain Power will aggregate all of the participating batteries, which allows them to leverage locally sourced clean energy when it is needed most. Excess solar energy from customer rooftop solar systems is used to charge the batteries during the middle of the day, then, when Rocky Mountain Power needs additional energy during peak demand, that energy is used in the evening or mornings to power the customers’ home or business, alleviating the need to draw more energy from the grid likely from coal or gas plants. Utah Clean Energy supported this program during its development because it represents a step towards the kind of innovative, flexible clean energy grid that we need to decarbonize Utah’s energy portfolio. Learn more