Small Battery Program

The Efficiency Maine Trust is issuing a Program Opportunity Notice (PON) to recruit and partner with aggregators who will supply power to the electrical grid from residential and small business batteries located in Maine. Program Partners will be responsible for recruiting, enrolling, and supporting battery systems, and dispatching them to the grid when called upon by the Trust. The program will be funded through Electric Efficiency Procurement.

Program Partners will receive incentive payments of $200 per year for each average kilowatt of power discharged, calculated based on the average discharge across all peak load events within a Program Year (April 1 through March 31). Incentives are paid annually in June. There is no enrollment fee, and customers can opt out at any time. To qualify for incentive payments, the aggregated average kilowatt capacity for a Program Partner's battery portfolio must reach at least 50 kW for one or more events during the Program Year.

Batteries eligible for participation must be interconnected to the electrical grid according to applicable codes and utility rules, equipped with inverters capable of collecting and reporting hourly interval data, and serve Maine utility customers on residential or small business rate classifications. Participating customers may also have solar generation. Batteries cannot participate in any other Efficiency Maine program or pilot program. Events will be called a minimum of two times per month, with a maximum of 60 events per year. Each event will last three hours and may be called at any time, typically between 5:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. on weekdays, with 24-hour advance notice provided.

Program agreements will cover the remainder of the initial Program Year following application approval, plus 10 additional Program Years. The Trust will handle event forecasting, incentive calculations, and program audits. Program Partners must recruit customers, manage customer agreements, dispatch batteries when alerted, provide performance data from inverters, distribute incentives to customers, and offer technical support.