In the basement of an Emack & Bolio’s ice cream shop in Midtown Manhattan, six batteries—each about the size of a toaster oven stood on its side—are plugged into the wall, connected right to the breaker box.
Those batteries will charge during off-peak electricity times, when power is cheap. When energy demand increases and power prices go up, the batteries will discharge, keeping the freezers running and lights on while cutting the business’s utility costs.
The batteries are from David Energy, a New York City-based startup energy provider. David Energy provides batteries to businesses for free, and then uses its software platform to manage when they draw and discharge power.
It’s a unique solution that has the potential to lower businesses’ electricity bills while also easing overall demand on the power grid, which makes it more reliable for everyone.
An aging grid increases costs
David Energy’s ultimate mission is to have a power grid that runs 100% on clean energy, but especially in a city like New York, not every building, business owner, or tenant can access solar power directly.
In the meantime, plug-in batteries—which can connect to a standard wall outlet and don’t require any electrical work to get up and running—can be an easy, low-lift solution to reduce energy demand and decarbonize a business’s operations.
“The grid is aging, and a big reason why [utility] bills are going up is the infrastructure itself,” says David Energy cofounder and CEO James McGinniss. “More than half of most of our customers’ bills is just the cost of delivering the power, and we want the grid to continue to be reliable while still being affordable.”
