Keeping the Lights on in California, Together

The Leap team would like to extend our deepest gratitude to our partner community for their role in helping to keep the lights on in California throughout the state’s historic early September heat wave. Through the Leap platform, we virtually aggregated a portfolio of 77MW in flexible load across 24 technology partners to support the grid each day between August 31st and September 8th.

We were able to call on over 21,000 unique devices - including a mix of batteries, EV chargers, smart thermostats, building management systems, water pumps and other distributed energy resources (DERs) - to reduce their energy consumption or deliver energy back to the grid throughout this period.

On September 6th, the California power grid peak demand hit 52,061 MW, a new all-time record for CAISO. Demand-side reductions were instrumental to preventing rolling blackouts as extreme temperatures caused demand for electricity to spike across the state. The effective response to this crisis by demand flexibility solutions like Leap’s showcased the significant potential of DERs to serve as grid-stabilizing resources. Our response also demonstrates that adding more electrified technologies - like electric vehicles - to the grid can help solve grid strain rather than exacerbating the problem, as many critics claim.

As heat waves become more frequent and intense due to the impacts of climate change, demand-side resources will be become key grid flexibility solutions - and they should be compensated accordingly. In order to build long-term grid resilience, it will be important to establish incentive structures that encourage DERs to transact in energy markets on a day-to-day basis and provide reliable support to the grid.

Leap’s grid services solutions ensure that the developers and operators of DERs can generate the maximum revenue possible for their crucial contributions to grid stability. Throughout the heat emergency in California, our platform created value for partners by responding to Emergency Load Reduction Program (ELRP) events each day. We also bid resources into the wholesale electricity market to further reduce strain and generate additional revenue for our partners. In total, we created over $1 million in energy market revenue opportunities during this period.

After successfully mobilizing to prevent blackouts in communities throughout California last week, we are more committed than ever to scaling up our grid flexibility solutions and empowering our partner community to play an active role in building a more resilient power system.