Phillips: Duke Energy has one million field switches, mostly one-way
Stacey Phillips · Frontier Forum: How VPPs earn grid-scale trust [partner content] · Mar 10, 2026 · at 14:22
Stacey Phillips discusses Duke Energy's legacy demand-management infrastructure and pragmatic approach to grid resources.
0:00 / 0:08exact quote · 8.5s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“People make fun of me because we have a million switches in the field. And the vast majority of them are one way.”
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 Stacey Phillips
Phillips: Duke Energy manages one million customers and 2.5GW in summer capacity
“We have a million customers who participate in our programs with us. We've got two gigawatts across all the utilities in the winter and two and a half in the summer.”
Phillips: Grid operators only need reliable parameter forecasting from VPPs
“As long as it's repeatable and reliable forecasting of how long, how much notice do I have to give it, because everything has notice, how long can I run it, And then, what do I need to know about it afterwards, and when can I run it again? That's what they nee…”
Phillips: VPPs require energy management system integration for power plant parity
“I've talked to our energy control center director around, like, what would it take for us to be integrated into the energy management system? Where, you know, is that what this looks like when you actually have parity with power plants? And the answer is yes. …”
Phillips: Duke Energy activated almost all winter programs during cold snaps
“And during those two weekends, we called almost all of our winter programs.”
Phillips: Duke Energy built a 45 MW battery VPP in 18 months
“Brought together the partnerships with aggregators like Energy Hub, as well as our local trade allies and other stakeholders who were interested in that. And 18 months later, we've got 45 megawatts of it, and it's a great program.”
Phillips: Running load switches for one hour prevents customer churn
“If I look at my level zero switches, and I don't mind calling them level zero a couple years ago, we would run them for three or four hours at a time, and customers would get very hot. Now we run them one hour at a time, and customers don't leave the program f…”