Virtual power plants in the US

Timeline

1. 2026
2. Oct 14

   Sunrun said its and Tesla's residential batteries delivered 669 MW of peak power to California's grid on October 5 and 745 MW on October 6; DSGS dispatches on both evenings were triggered by a CAISO day-ahead locational marginal price above $200/MWh, and on October 5 DSGS and ELRP (the CPUC's Emergency Load Reduction Program) dispatched concurrently across all participating investor-owned utility territories, with no per-program split given (release). Tesla's October 8 post showed 85,774 participating Powerwall homes, 601 MW of participating peak power and 932 MWh of output on October 6 (coverage).

3. Oct 13

   A Brattle Group report prepared for Everyday Electric estimated that a 301 MW residential VPP at a representative utility with 1 million residential customers could offset $56 of a modeled $98 inflation-adjusted five-year rise in the average household's annual bill (report; coverage).

4. Oct 13

   Central Georgia EMC and Base Power announced a 50 MW cooperative-dispatched residential battery program, Base's first utility partnership outside Texas, offering whole-home backup for $95, with first installations scheduled for 2027 (release; coverage).

5. Oct 9

   FERC rejected PJM's Interim Resource Adequacy Service and Bring Your Own New Capacity rules (docket ER26-3515), under which new generation, storage and eligible demand-side resources could have offset a new large load's curtailment exposure, and kept only PJM's Large Load definition and registry (order; coverage).

6. Oct 8

   Voltus said it raised $225 million in a Series D and expects to grow its platform to 20 GW by 2030 as it executes its Bring Your Own Capacity program in PJM and MISO (release; coverage).

7. Oct 6

   Renew Home renamed itself Everyday Electric and introduced Everyday VPP, which it describes as "a personalized virtual power plant that builds upon traditional demand response programs," with direct partnerships with HVAC, EV, EVSE, storage and solar OEMs; it said it had acquired Smartcar, a connected-vehicle platform, to support customer savings and managed charging in the utility programs it operates, without disclosing terms. The company says it coordinates 6+ GW of capacity across connected products; its about page counts batteries at installed rated capacity and HVAC at the one-hour peak load shift potential of connected smart HVAC systems and thermostats (release; acquisition announcement; about page; coverage).

8. Sep 30

   Governor Newsom approved SB 913, which adds Section 380.1 to the Public Utilities Code and requires the CPUC, in coordination with the CEC and CAISO, to enhance existing market-integrated pathways for aggregated distributed energy resources to qualify as resource adequacy capacity by June 30, 2028; September 30 was the last day to return it under Article IV, Section 10(b)(2) of the state constitution, the Governor's office listed it among the day's signings in its legislative update, and the Secretary of State chaptered it the same day as Chapter 987, Statutes of 2026 (bill history; enrolled text; coverage).

9. Sep 23

   Sunrun and SPAN announced an expansion of their partnership under which Sunrun will provide home solar and battery storage, with a SPAN smart panel, through a pre-paid lease at no cost to the builder or homeowner, to new-construction homes in Texas and "other specified markets" it does not name that host SPAN's XFRA compute nodes, and will enroll the home batteries in its grid service programs; the release's subhead promises "residential deployment at gigawatt scale" and its body gives no node count, megawatts or compute buyer (release; coverage).

10. Sep 21

    Sunrun and Tesla said in a joint release that their home battery fleets dispatched more than 580 MW of peak power to California's grid for three hours on the evening of September 9, 2026: 517 MW from Tesla Powerwalls (110,000 Powerwalls participated, 55% of them owned and operated by Sunrun) and 63 MW from what the release calls additional batteries, with Sunrun also dispatching more than 30,000 of its customers' batteries from other manufacturers; the DSGS event was triggered by the CAISO day-ahead locational marginal price exceeding $200/MWh and the ELRP event was called by PG&E for its territory, and the companies call it the largest distributed power plant dispatch event on record (release; coverage).

11. Sep 18

    Governor Newsom signed AB 113, the Budget Act of 2026 amendments bill, chaptered as Chapter 248, Statutes of 2026; the chaptered text carries two $10 million appropriations for the Distributed Electricity Backup Assets program, each restricted to new clean microgrids or new non-residential or aggregated residential distributed clean energy and storage projects, and does not name the Demand Side Grid Support program (bill history; chaptered text; coverage).

12. Sep 11

    The Virgin Islands Energy Office ran two half-hour tests of its Tesla-operated VIBES-2.0 virtual power plant in the US Virgin Islands: 190 residential batteries across 80 sites on St. Thomas and St. John discharged at approximately 800 kW and 108 batteries on St. Croix at approximately 500 kW, per the office's September 16 release, which put the combined total at 2.5 MWh without saying how it was measured (about 0.65 MWh by The Duck Curve's arithmetic) and total incentives paid or processing at approximately $244,000 (release; coverage).

13. Sep 10

    Written comments closed on New Jersey's GSESP Phase 2 Block 1 storage straw with 36 comments dated August 15 to September 10, 2026 on the comment page of Docket QO26040116 (plus utility and developer filings on its document list), many asking for payment on average or delivered energy rather than minimum hourly discharge, including Vote Solar asking for $300 per kilowatt-year and at least 60 summer events, Lunar Energy supporting $200, and Rockland Electric asking for a $2,000 to $3,000 upfront payment on top of it (docket).

14. Sep 10

    Southern California Edison requested a three-hour dispatch during peak hours of the Sunrun and Tesla batteries enrolled in ELRP in its territory, which the September 9 event had not dispatched; the companies say they delivered more than 140 MW (release).

15. Sep 9

    Tesla Energy said on X that about 69,000 Powerwall owners across California were dispatching more than 500 MW to the grid during a heatwave; its attached dashboard screenshot, live as of 7:17 p.m. PDT, showed 105,009 homes in California VPPs, 68,887 homes in a VPP event, and 507 MW of battery power discharging (post; coverage).

16. Sep 3

    New Jersey board staff held the GSESP Phase 2 Block 1 stakeholder meeting; the deck says the program "will be officially established as part of the VPP Interim Program Minimum Filing Requirements Order" (presentation).

17. Sep 3

    PG&E announced SHARE, a Google-funded virtual power plant proof of concept that aims to enroll nearly 21,000 existing home devices in Alameda and Santa Clara counties (release; coverage).

18. Sep 2

    SB 913 was enrolled and presented to Governor Newsom (bill history).

19. Sep 1

    California's Senate passed and Assembly concurred in AB 113, the budget bill, with no appropriation for the Demand Side Grid Support program, though it reappropriates Item 3360-108-0001 of the Budget Act of 2021, the backup-assets money SB 168 opened to DSGS, for encumbrance or expenditure until June 30, 2027 (bill text; coverage).

20. Aug 26

    PSE&G announced the GridSmart Battery Program, a $5,000 incentive toward a home battery that can be called on during utility peak events, ahead of both state programs (release; coverage).

21. Aug 24

    Shell confirmed the completed sale of the German home battery and VPP company sonnen to the family office Tiven (Energy-Storage.News; coverage).

22. Aug 19

    The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities announced its August 17 straw proposal for up to 150 MW of behind-the-meter residential storage paid up to $200 per kilowatt-year for 10 years, targeted to open by July 2027 and excluding any project under contract with a data center or other new large load (straw proposal; coverage).

23. Aug 18

    GridLab, Kevala, and E3 announced their California flexible-load blueprint, arguing that flexible load should be paid only for measured performance and below verified avoided cost, and that V2G should be accredited like grid storage (report; coverage).

24. Aug 17

    Sunrun agreed to supply capacity from a portion of its PJM and MISO residential fleet to Voltus's Bring Your Own Capacity programs for hyperscalers, without disclosing a megawatt figure (release; coverage).

25. Jul 27

    The New Jersey board announced a July 30, 2026 public meeting in West Windsor Township to take stakeholder feedback on the VPP straw proposal (release).

26. Jul 15

    New Jersey board staff issued a straw proposal for a statewide VPP program, adopting a working definition of a VPP as an aggregation of DERs and other load management technologies that can balance electrical loads to defer or avoid transmission or distribution upgrades and provide "utility-scale, utility-grade grid services analogous to those provided by traditional generation resources," with an interim utility-run program launching no later than July 1, 2027, an open-access tariff from 2029, and an appendix sizing a 2 to 7 percent statewide peak shave at 393 to 1,374 MW (straw proposal).

27. Jul 13

    California's SB 168 was approved by the Governor as Chapter 81, making 2021 Distributed Electricity Backup Assets money also available to the Demand Side Grid Support program through June 30, 2027 (bill text; bill history).

28. Jun 24

    Sunrun, Renew Home, and Tesla announced a framework to deliver more than 16 GW of flexible capacity to hyperscalers and utilities from home batteries and more than 8 million smart thermostats and devices, with more than 300 MW they say is available in Virginia, expected to grow to at least 500 MW by 2030 (release).

29. Jun 2

    Voltus announced a three-year Bring Your Own Capacity agreement with Google for up to 100 MW a year of distributed resources in PJM (release).

30. May 21

    FERC accepted SPP's Order 2222 compliance filing, as amended on April 9, 2026, according to SPP's May 2026 regulatory status report (report).

31. May 18

    Ann Arbor's Sustainable Energy Utility began installing city-owned solar and batteries in the Bryant neighborhood (announcement; coverage).

32. Apr 27

    The California Energy Commission approved the fifth edition of its DSGS guidelines, reporting an estimated 1,145 MW enrolled, $109.5 million allocated of an originally envisioned $314 million, and a $19.5 million cap on 2026 storage-VPP payments absent new funding (guidelines).

33. Apr 1

    Requested effective date of Public Service Company of Colorado's AVPP tariff, filed on more than thirty days' notice; the PUC's docket sheet for Proceeding No. 26AL-0078E lists its status as Effective with no filings after February 25, 2026 (docket sheet).

34. Mar 9

    PJM's Order 2222 team laid out for stakeholders a schedule in which DERs are able to offer into the 2028/2029 Base Residual Auction under its aggregator model in the June 30 to July 7, 2026 window, enrollment begins in November 2027, and the full model goes live February 1, 2028 (presentation).

35. Mar 2

    ERCOT raised the ADER pilot's registered capacity limit from 200 MW to 500 MW while leaving its ancillary service limit at 100 MW (market notice).

36. Feb 25

    Public Service Company of Colorado filed Advice Letter No. 2014 and its AVPP program plan to implement the approved Colorado program: 25 MW per year, a generation capacity incentive of $151.70 per kW-year for year-round aggregations or $106.19 for summer-only ones plus smaller transmission and distribution incentives, rates fixed for five years for first-year aggregations, up to 80 load control events a year for year-round aggregations and 60 for summer-only ones of at most four consecutive hours, and an estimated 125 MW enrolled by the end of 2030 (advice letter; program plan).

37. Jan 20

    Governor Sherrill signed Executive Order No. 2, declaring a State of Emergency and directing the board to commence development of a VPP program within 180 days (order).

38. 2025
39. Dec 15

    The Colorado Public Utilities Commission issued Decision No. C25-0903, granting the settlement on Public Service Company of Colorado's Aggregator Virtual Power Plant program "without modification," calling it "a reasonable approach for launching Colorado's first VPP Program" but "not the VPP program we expect to have in the coming years" (decision).

40. Dec 1

    The CEC's December 2025 status report put DSGS at more than 448,000 participants and an estimated load reduction capacity of more than 1 GW as of November 30, 2025, based on provider estimates (report page).

41. Nov 14

    SPP made its third Order 2222 compliance filing, proposing an effective date in the second quarter of 2030 and asking FERC for an order by February 13, 2026 (filing).

42. Sep 10

    MISO gave its Distributed Energy Resources Task Force a revised Order 2222 timeline: aggregated resource enrollment available June 1, 2029, day-ahead and real-time market participation January 1, 2030, and capacity market participation from June 1, 2030 (minutes).

43. Aug 18

    The Brattle Group, commissioned by Sunrun and Tesla Energy, estimated $28 million to $206 million in net system savings from DSGS over 2025 to 2028 and reported an average net-load reduction of 539 MW during a July 2025 test event (release).

44. Aug 15

    Public Service Company of Colorado filed the settlement agreement on its Aggregator Virtual Power Plant program (Hearing Exhibit 131) that the commission later approved (decision).

45. Jun 24

    NYISO's 2026 market project candidates list scheduled deployment of Order 2222 compliant software by the end of 2026, building on the FERC-accepted DER participation model it deployed in 2023 (project descriptions).

46. May 1

    FERC approved all outstanding items of PJM's Order 2222 aggregator model, per PJM (PJM presentation, March 9, 2026).

47. Jan 31

    Public Service Company of Colorado filed its Aggregator Virtual Power Plant application, Proceeding No. 25A-0061E, proposing about $78.5 million for 25 MW of capacity a year over five years (PUC proceeding page).

48. Jan 10

    DOE released its Liftoff update on virtual power plants, counting 33 GW across North America, describing 80 to 160 GW by 2030 as enough to serve 10 to 20 percent of peak load that could support rapid load growth while reducing overall grid costs, and saying CAISO and ISO New England had fully complied with Order 2222 "though implementation remains slow nationally" (announcement).

49. 2024
50. Nov 1

    CAISO implemented its Order 2222 program, according to the November 2024 FERC Order 2222 and DER policy tracker report (report).

51. Jun 28

    CAISO's business requirements specification for Order 2222, which references its August 15, 2022 tariff filing, scheduled the implementation release for November 1, 2024, reducing the minimum aggregation size to 100 kW and adding heterogeneous aggregations (specification).

52. 2022
53. Jun 30

    California's AB 205, authorizing the Demand Side Grid Support program, which the CEC's program page describes as incentives for load reduction and backup generation during extreme events from May to October, was approved by the Governor and chaptered as Chapter 61, Statutes of 2022 (bill history; CEC program page).

54. Feb 2

    ISO New England made its primary Order 2222 compliance filing (key project page).

55. 2020
56. Sep 17

    FERC issued Order No. 2222, requiring RTOs and ISOs to open their capacity, energy, and ancillary service markets to aggregations of distributed energy resources; the rule was published October 21, 2020, took effect December 21, 2020, and set compliance filings due September 17, 2021 (Federal Register).

This is a maintained page: it is revised as the record changes, and every revision is reviewed before it goes live. Dates in the text are the dates the facts hold for, not the date you are reading it.