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California's legislature recently concluded its session, passing several energy bills including the legalization of balcony solar panels and a data center rate study. However, lawmakers rejected Governor Newsom's proposal to limit utility wildfire liability, causing PG&E and Edison International stocks to drop sharply. The subsequent handling of Senate Bill 492 (SB 492) and insurance recovery issues have become the focus of market attention.
About a decade ago, home backup power options were limited and costly. Today, battery subscription models have emerged, allowing users to access energy storage devices with low barriers and pay monthly. Utility Dive's survey shows that this model is developing rapidly in places like Texas and Illinois, potentially easing grid pressure, but its economic viability depends on market rules and virtual power plant policies.
Sunrun added 19,793 subscribers in Q2, down 31% year-over-year; solar installations were 174 MW, down 23% year-over-year. The battery attachment rate rose to 74%. The company lowered its full-year 2026 guidance for cash generation and total subscriber value, primarily due to the pain of the direct sales transition, Freedom Forever's bankruptcy, and high interest rates. Management stated that monthly sales in the direct sales business returned to positive growth in June and July.
The California Independent System Operator (CAISO) is expected to release a revised demand response framework on August 19, in which a "small metering adjustment" could significantly reshape California's battery market landscape. According to Brian Turner, Western Regulatory Affairs Lead at the Advanced Energy Union (AEU), the adjustment could incentivize over 2 GW of behind-the-meter distributed energy resources to participate in CAISO's wholesale market. The proposal treats distributed energy resource aggregators as independent resources, allowing them to export power to CAISO load zones before net load reaches zero, thereby opening a wholesale market value stream for resources such as behind-the-meter batteries.
The New Jersey Board of Public Utilities (BPU) released a draft virtual power plant (VPP) program on July 15, specifying that customer-side energy storage devices can participate in a two-year technology-neutral project managed by distribution companies, with plans to transition to an open-access VPP tariff mechanism by 2029. The draft responds to Governor Mikie Sherrill's executive order and seeks public comments until August 17.
Best Buy announced the installation of rooftop community solar gardens at its Long Island City store in New York and the activation of a solar field near its Dinuba, California distribution center, further expanding its renewable energy footprint. These projects are expected to generate substantial annual electricity, helping the company achieve its 2040 net-zero emissions target and its 2030 goal of reducing emissions by 75%.
Demand flexibility technology has been proven viable, but the new challenge facing the industry is converting pilot results into scaled customer participation. Many current projects still operate in a pilot mode, with customer experience becoming a growth bottleneck. The article points out that front-end details such as registration processes and ongoing engagement will determine whether flexibility projects can deliver planable capacity, citing Octopus Energy as an example of the value of a customer-first strategy.
Australian resident Sam's electricity bill showed a credit balance of over 700 Australian dollars (about 500 US dollars), thanks to a flexible energy system comprising rooftop solar, home batteries, and an electric vehicle. Australia has the highest penetration of distributed energy in the world, with 40% of homes equipped with rooftop solar, totaling 28.3 gigawatts of installed capacity, exceeding the nation's coal-fired power capacity; nearly 5% of households have batteries, with over 400,000 new installations between July 2025 and June 2026. In the United States, residential solar coverage is about 9%, and battery installation rates are below 1%, with the main gaps being hardware costs and the lack of pricing mechanisms that value flexibility. Facing a surge in data center electricity demand over the next decade, the United States can learn from Australia's subsidy policies, virtual power plant rules, and rate design to integrate distributed energy into core grid planning.
When utilities advance customer interaction digitalization, poor experiences often result from unclear data and fragmented systems. Andreya Shaak, Senior Vice President of Product Strategy, and Christina Schueneman, Senior Vice President of Implementation and Services at VertexOne, propose six key areas and improvement methods, including upfront goal definition, ecosystem collaboration, data readiness, human-centered design, feedback loops, and phased rollout, accompanied by real-world success cases.
Colorado public power utility Platte River Power Authority announced a partnership with EnergyHub to design and deploy a virtual power plant (VPP), targeting 39 MW of dispatchable capacity by 2030 (19 MW from customer distributed energy resources plus 20 MW from battery storage). The first program focuses on smart thermostats and is scheduled to launch in late summer, with electric vehicle charging management to follow.