Renew Home CEO Ben Brown contrasts legacy peak demand response targeting summer heat waves with modern year-round grid volatility.
0:00 / 0:27exact quote · 27.4s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Those were really targeted towards, you know, peak hours of the year, right? You know, maybe 40 to 60 hours a year where we were really just dealing with a really, you know, a heat wave. Now, obviously, we're seeing one, you know, more variable weather throughout shoulder seasons. Like, the last couple weeks, we've seen a lot of kind of heat waves or cold waves. And that all of a sudden stresses the grid in unique ways, and so there's a lot more hours of the year where you're dealing with these kind of mini peaks on the system that the system really wasn't built for”
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
Insight
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.”
Ben BrownMay 6, 2025▶ 2:22Frontier Forum: Unlocking next-generation VPPs
AssertionSupported
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 And honestly, that's probably outdated because now we know that natural building natural gas peakers are even more expensive.”
Ben BrownMay 6, 2025▶ 15:56Frontier Forum: Unlocking next-generation VPPs
AssertionPartly supported
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.”
Ben BrownMay 6, 2025▶ 16:15Frontier Forum: Unlocking next-generation VPPs
AssertionNot checkable as stated
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.”
Ben BrownMay 6, 2025▶ 9:05Frontier Forum: Unlocking next-generation VPPs
Insight
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…”
Ben BrownMay 6, 2025▶ 12:30Frontier Forum: Unlocking next-generation VPPs
PredictionNot checkable as stated
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…”
Ben BrownMay 6, 2025▶ 3:05Frontier Forum: Unlocking next-generation VPPs
Made with StarZero
Turn any episode into a week of clips.
This entire site, over 200 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable,
runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the
moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.
We use essential cookies to make the site work. With your permission we
also use analytics cookies (Google Analytics and Mixpanel) to understand
usage and improve StarZero. See our Cookie Policy.