Brown: Utilities require 25 to 50 MW to consider resources meaningful
Ben Brown · Frontier Forum: Unlocking next-generation VPPs · May 6, 2025 · at 21:20
Ben Brown, CEO of Renew Home, discusses the minimum scale threshold required for utilities and grid operators to take distributed energy programs seriously.
0:00 / 0:10exact quote · 10.5s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Unless we're talking, you know, in the 25 to 50 plus megawatts in terms of actual resource, it's harder for energy partners to see it as meaningful”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Ben Brown
Brown: Individual AI adoption equals hundreds of millions of new HVACs
“Like if you think about the idea that maybe as each individual having kind of an AI co-pilot, that's the equivalent of like having hundreds of millions of new HVAC systems all of a sudden being put onto the grid.”
Brown: VPPs cost 60% of natural gas peakers or less
“We believe that a VPP similar capacity resource would be 60% of the cost of a natural gas peaker investment. And honestly, that's probably outdated because now we know that natural building natural gas peakers are even more expensive.”
Brown: VPPs cost 40% of utility-scale battery installations
“And it would be, and the VPP would also be 40% of the cost of a utility scale battery investment.”
Brown: Nearly 75% of new Nest thermostat owners opt into energy shifting
“And so we have actually seen both opt-in and engagement that we're getting nearly 75% of all new Nest thermostat customers that install a device are opting into energy shifting.”
Brown: Large VPPs remain predictably stable even with individual customer control
“When you give individuals control, large, long system, and you have hundreds of thousands of customers or a million customers, you know, stochastically we can predict, you know, how these things will perform in aggregate. And so actually having control the ent…”
Brown: Locational grid strain will favor VPPs over central power plants
“There is going to continue to be, you know, more and more of a challenge that our system tries to struggle to grow to meet that demand, not just on the aggregate basis, But really on the distribution and locational basis, and I think that's also what's very un…”