Olivine is supporting California utilities and state agencies in deploying innovative DER pilot programs to rapidly respond to grid emergencies and mitigate the impacts of climate change during times of peak grid stress.
In 2021, Olivine was instrumental in supporting PG&E – to launch and operationalize its Emergency Load Reduction Program (ELRP) in record time by leveraging its flexible and scalable DER™ Platform and program services team. Simultaneously, Olivine also launched a similar grid emergency response program, the California State Emergency Program, for state facilities. Both programs engage Californians in energy use reduction during the highest system peak periods of summer to help avoid rotating outages and maintain grid reliability – all while minimizing costs to customers.
Following up from its successful operations of these programs in 2022, Olivine expanded its ELRP scope for the PG&E pilot to include millions of residential customers and additional use cases. During this same period, Olivine also launched and operated the ELRP pilot programs for SCE and SDG&E. As the grid emergencies escalated later in the summer, Olivine also become an energy service provider and aggregator for the state-run Demand Side Grid Support program. As the Program Administrator for ELRP programs across the state, the Olivine team is expanding the ELRP program to include non-residential and residential customers, aggregators, exporting DERs, virtual power plants (VPPs) and vehicle-grid-integrations for each of California’s investor-owned utilities (PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E). For these programs, Olivine provides meter data management, marketing, customer support, performance calculations, event notification distribution, and incentive disbursement. As of November 2022, Olivine is managing nearly 4 million residential and non-residential customers and over 800 MW of flexible load capacity under the ELRP and DSGS programs across California. ELRP will be operational through at least 2025.