BoxPower Inc. of Grass Valley is up for a $3 million grant from the California Energy Commission to expand its production of containerized remote power grids that are increasingly used by utilities to connect to customers in isolated areas.
The grant money is part of the commission’s programs to support clean energy entrepreneurship across the state.
“The funding will help us ramp up production, bring down costs to build the units and help us get into other markets,” said Anderson Barkow, co-founder and chief financial officer of BoxPower.
BoxPower’s primary product is the SolarContainer, which is a fully integrated power source that combines solar panel arrays with batteries and generators to create a virtual utility grid in remote areas.
The company has contracts to deploy its boxes in remote areas in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona and Alberta, Canada, Barkow said. It has deployed its containers to locations across California over the past six years as the state’s investor-owned utilities have been de-energizing remote grids to prevent sparking wildland and forest fires. Utilities are required to provide service to their customers, but that can be expensive and difficult in remote locations. BoxPower’s product allows utilities to continue serving customers in their service areas but off the grid.
At its meeting Wednesday, the commission’s staff recommended approval of the grant for BoxPower's turnkey, stand-alone solar-powered electric systems with backup battery and generator power.
BoxPower is one of nine companies from around the state up for a total of $23 million in the CEC’s RAMP program. RAMP stands for Realizing Accelerated Manufacturing and Production for clean energy technologies.
This grant is for low-rate initial production, or LRIP, to help the company ramp up manufacturing of its containers in Grass Valley. BoxPower is also working with a contract manufacturer in Stockton to meet demand, Barkow said.
The CEC is supporting BoxPower’s efforts to expand its “utility grade renewable energy supply capable of rapid deployment to any location."
California and other region utilities use the BoxPower units as a more affordable alternative to hardening or undergrounding remote utility lines.
Originally designed to serve far-off electrical grids in Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, the company has seen demand for its product to replace grid power in isolated areas of California.
A single BoxPower unit can serve five to six homes, and the company can string them together to serve up to 500 homes with batteries and generators in a few containers and a larger solar array, Barkow said.
BoxPower’s technology was developed in 2011 at Princeton University, with research supported by grants from the National Science Foundation. The company was spun out of Princeton in 2016, when it began marketing and selling its portable power unit in a standard shipping container.
Interest in BoxPower’s products spiked at the end of 2019 in California following widespread public safety power blackouts during fire seasons of 2018 and 2019. The rural power microgrid now has become a primary business for BoxPower, Barkow said.
