Green Mountain Power leased batteries to homes, built Vermont's largest power source

The BBC reported in September 2026 on Green Mountain Power (GMP), Vermont's largest utility, whose battery programme began as a pilot in 2017. It installs two batteries in participants' homes on a 10-year lease for $55 a month. One participant, Pollyanna Bladyka, who lost power around a dozen times a year, chose it over a $12,000 gas generator and has had no outage since 2024.

More than 5,500 people have home batteries in the programme. Together they form a virtual power plant: GMP can tap the batteries whenever needed, though the customer always keeps some reserve, and links them with EV batteries, commercial demand response and a handful of utility-scale batteries. The programme provides about 110MW, comparable to a small gas plant, and is the largest power source in the state. Enrolment surged in 2023 when regulators lifted a cap, and over 2,500 people have enrolled since.

GMP says its virtual power plant has effectively replaced the oil, diesel and gas peaker plants it used to rely on at peak demand; four still run occasionally if the regional grid operator calls on them. GMP says the plant saved customers $11m last year. It aims to eliminate outages by 2030 and is piloting free batteries in outage-prone rural areas.

Peaker plants run for a few hours a year yet cost a whole plant, so replacing them with stored energy is cheaper.

Customers pay for the battery to avoid outages, which funds the grid resource.

Leasing avoids a large upfront bill: $55 a month versus a $12,000 generator.

Customers keep reserve power, so the grid's use of their batteries does not compromise their protection.

Sell the customer a benefit they want (no outages) and the utility gets a grid resource as the by-product.

GMP aims to offer storage to nearly all of its almost 300,000 customers and to more than double the virtual power plant by 2034, adding EV batteries. The BBC notes the main barrier nationally is that utilities earn more by building assets than by using demand flexibility.