Your Thermostat Is Now a Power Plant

US VPP capacity hit 38 GW in 2025 after a 21% surge, driven by a residential battery enrollment boom and accelerating state-level policy action

2 Apr 2026

The American power grid is getting smarter, and it is happening in garages and living rooms. Virtual power plants, networks of home batteries, EV chargers, and smart thermostats coordinated to act like a single grid resource, enrolled 38 GW of capacity in 2025, a 21 percent jump over the prior year, according to energy research firm Ohm Analytics.

The headline number is impressive. What is behind it is more interesting.

Residential battery enrollments in VPP programs surged 153 percent year-over-year. California's Demand-Side Grid Support program and Puerto Rico's Customer Battery Energy Sharing initiative together added more than 1,200 MW of new home-based capacity in a single year. Residential assets now represent roughly one third of all enrolled VPP capacity in the country.

Commercial and industrial resources still dominate overall share, and Ohm Analytics senior analyst Teddy Storrs does not expect that to change anytime soon. Large industrial loads deliver far more grid value per enrolled unit than any home battery. "There's just so much more bang for the buck out there in the C&I space," Storrs said.

With federal momentum stalled, states are doing the heavy lifting. Ohm tracked more than 150 utility, regulatory, and legislative actions supporting VPP development in 2025 alone. Virginia enacted a law requiring a 450 MW VPP pilot. Maryland utilities are building permanent, ratepayer-funded programs. National Grid launched the first US VPP to offer extra compensation for batteries sited on capacity-constrained feeders, a model that could fundamentally change how distributed storage is valued at the grid edge.

There are real headwinds. California cut funding for its Demand-Side Grid Support program, previously the largest VPP initiative in the nation. Pilot programs still account for 45 percent of all US VPPs, and Ohm Analytics identifies converting those pilots into permanent programs as the single most critical challenge facing long-term market growth.

The US Department of Energy has set a target of 80 to 160 GW of VPP capacity by 2030. At current growth rates, the low end of that range is achievable. Getting there will require states to keep leading, pilots to become policy, and the momentum of 2025 to hold.