Announcing Resilia and Resi-Station
Today, SIP announced we’re creating North America’s largest residential virtual power plant.
SIP committed $80 million to the project, called Resi-Station, and invested $20 million in project partner OhmConnect, a leading residential demand response and energy services technology company.
SIP Co-CEO Jonathan Winer and OhmConnect CEO Cisco DeVries were joined by Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf, Obama climate lead and former EPA Administrator Carol Browner, and California Energy Commission chair David Hochschild to share the exciting news.
Resi-Station is an approximately 550 MW project that will comprise hundreds of thousands of actively engaged customers with a fleet of in-home smart devices delivering targeted energy reductions, orchestrated by OhmConnect technology that predicts, incentivizes, and coordinates residential energy use. At full scale, Resi-Station could provide 5 GWH of energy conservation over a single week — an amount equal to the total energy shortfall that caused blackouts this year in California, or the equivalent of not burning 3.8 million pounds of coal.
This is a huge step forward for clean energy — not only because hundreds of thousands of California consumers will benefit, but also because it will set a national example for how to create the energy grids of tomorrow.
Resi-Station is the first commitment of SIP’s new Resilia advanced energy platform, which seeks to make electrical grids across the country more distributed, dynamic and transactional. We are confident Resi-Station will succeed in California and show communities across the nation how smart investments can create cost savings for residents and drive conservation when the grid needs it most.
You can read more about Resi-Station at www.resi-station.com, or see a recap from TechCrunch: “Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners looks to make CA power grids more reliable with a $100 million investment.”
Leaders in clean energy announce the Resi-Station project.
What we’re doing
We welcomed Tyler Duvall as CEO of Cavnue, our platform building the future of roads. Cavnue, a recently launched SIP platform, announced the appointment of Tyler Duvall as CEO and Mark de la Vergne as Director of Cavnue’s Michigan office. In Michigan, Cavnue is designing the first fully dedicated connected and autonomous laneway in the United States. Duvall, a former top DOT official, and McKinsey alum, will lead the Cavnue team nationally as it designs the physical, digital, coordination, and operational infrastructure to accelerate and realize the full potential of connected and autonomous vehicles.
We discussed the importance of making sure new infrastructure projects address inequality, and respond to crises with innovation. SIP Co-CEO Jonathan Winer spoke at MIT’s EmTech Virtual Conference to discuss the disparate impact of certain technology investments, and how to create more equitable outcomes moving forward. Jonathan pointed to SIP projects like Resilia and Michigan’s autonomous vehicle lane that are creating more equitable communities. Jonathan also delivered a keynote address on “The future of infrastructure: how technology is disrupting and enabling an asset class” at the SuperReturn Global Infrastructure conference.
What we’re reading
The pandemic could widen the digital divide: A new school year has begun, and many school districts are sticking with remote education or a hybrid of remote and in-person. This risks greater educational setbacks for students who can least afford it. As Wired explains, of more than 50 million students in the U.S., roughly 15 percent have no access to high-speed internet at home. When classes went remote in the spring, 36 percent of low-income parents reported that their kids didn’t have access to a computer to complete homework, according to a Pew study, versus 14 percent of middle-income parents and 4 percent of upper-income parents. The term “summer slide” has long been used to describe the summertime learning loss among K-12 students. Now there’s a real risk of a much greater “Covid slide.”
The challenges facing new federal infrastructure spending: On the campaign trail, President-elect Biden promised bold infrastructure investments that will create jobs and tackle the climate crisis. Yet as Roll Call explains, divided government and lack of bipartisan cooperation may prevent Biden from achieving his ambitious goals. The ripest opportunity may come early, as the federal highway bill is set to expire in October 2021.
How cash-strapped states may turn to public-private partnerships: The COVID-19 crisis has caused massive economic disruption, and many states are seeing significant drops in tax revenues. Inframation looked at which states’ budget shortfalls are threatening infrastructure investments, and where P3s might be able to fill in the gaps. Some states, like Massachusetts, were slowly growing P3 procurement before the pandemic hit; others, especially rural states such as Montana and Wyoming, may not see P3s as a viable option.
