Black Seed Bagels in Bushwick has three carry-on-suitcase-sized batteries plugged into the wall behind its catering kitchen. One powers a commercial oven called the Baconator (thousands of pounds of meat a week). Two more run energy-hungry fridges. The batteries are 2.8 kWh each, supplied for free by David Energy, a Brooklyn-based retail energy provider running a pilot program with NYC small businesses.
The target here is demand charges … those nasty fees Con Edison bills based on your peak 15-minute power draw in a given month. For NYC commercial customers, demand charges can run 15% to 50% of the total bill. By shifting big appliances to battery power during peak windows, Black Seed cuts its maximum grid draw and pays less. Co-owner Noah Bernamoff figures even $80/month savings per location across 10 shops adds up to almost $10,000/year. In the bagel business, that’s real money.
David Energy’s software decides exactly when each appliance switches to battery. As of mid-January, the startup had signed deals for about 50 locations and 500+ kWh of storage … fast-food joints, a day spa, a dog groomer (the battery cushions a fur-drying machine, which is a sentence I didn’t expect to write today). CEO James McGinniss sees this as a wedge into virtual power plant territory: batteries store power when it’s cheap, avoid pulling from the grid when it’s expensive, and can participate in NYISO demand-response programs that pay customers to cut usage during grid stress events.
The reason plug-in batteries matter specifically in NYC? Fire safety regs. The FDNY has subjected stationary lithium-ion installations to rules so strict they’re impractical for most buildings. Plug-in units sidestep the whole interconnection and permitting headache. If a customer leaves, David Energy just picks the battery back up.
This pilot builds on the growing plug-in energy movement … Jackery and EcoFlow portable units for household backup, Pila Energy‘s mesh battery system designed for daily bill reduction, and the balcony solar panels that are already powering over a million homes in Germany.
Saw this over on Canary Media which is new to me.
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