Scaling Residential Virtual Power Plants Through Automation

What will it take to triple the scale of virtual power plant (VPP) deployment in the U.S. by 2030? The Department of Energy’s “Virtual Power Plants - Pathways to Commercial Liftoff” report calls for the deployment of 80-160 GW of new VPPs over the next six years. At Leap, we’re working with our partners - the leading providers of distributed energy resources (DERs) - to help them build VPPs in energy markets around the country. The key to fast, scalable growth of VPPs? Leap’s automation. 

Leap offers a suite of universal APIs that work across markets and programs to enable automation across the four main stages along the journey of an energy asset (i.e, a customer meter) to enrolling and generating revenue in grid services programs:

• Connect - Connect customer meters to the Leap platform

• Manage - Set initial meters configuration and manage ongoing grid services participation

• Bid & Dispatch - Activate customer meters to participate in grid events

• Analyze - Measure and assess grid services performance

The API endpoints available at each of these stages of the journey serve as the critical foundation for partners to build on in order to reduce operational costs as well as customize and differentiate their VPP offerings. This could include things like dynamic dispatch strategies, tailored customer notifications and customized reports or dashboards.

The flexibility to choose which use cases to automate, and when, means that the path to automation can look different for different partners. Some of our partners fully integrate across all available API use cases right when they launch their Leap-powered VPP programs in order to grow their offerings as quickly as possible from the start. However, this integration work requires an upfront allocation of developer resources that can be challenging for some organizations to commit to all at once. 

Another approach is to introduce this integration work in phases in order to limit the number of developer hours needed at each stage. We've worked with dozens of partners across residential and commercial and industrial (C&I) industries over the last couple of years to complete this integration work, and have seen what's worked well when it comes to VPP automation. Based on these experiences and our grid services expertise, we’ve developed recommendations and best practices for how to approach phased API integration. 

In this three-part blog series, we’ll provide an overview on how to most effectively phase API integration for both residential and C&I technology partners. And, we’ll share the significant benefits that our API-integrated partners have experienced in terms of VPP growth, improved performance and ultimately increased revenue.

Today, we’ll dive into how providers of residential energy technologies can approach automation workflows with Leap. 

Recommended phasing for residential providers

Residential partners are regularly connecting smaller energy resources and scaling to very large numbers of customers and devices. Converting as many customers as possible through the enrollment and activation process is critical to this scale and is therefore an important part of the first two integration phases Leap recommends.

Phase One: Connect meters & automate dispatch events

At launch, the following automation use cases are recommended in order to get the most value out of the initial launch:

• Embed the Leap Connect app into your sign-up workflows for meters in California and New York, where customers are required to authorize use of their utility meter data in order to participate in grid services. This enables you to embed the Leap Connect URL with a unique customer reference ID into email, mobile apps or e-commerce checkout flows to make it easy for your customers to participate in grid services.

• Use the Meters API to sync meter inventory data between the Leap platform and your internal systems as a precursor to receiving dispatch events.

• Leverage the Dispatch API to receive prioritized event notifications pushed to your webhook endpoint (event polling is also possible) in real-time and automate control of your customer devices using the relevant dispatch strategies.

A major residential solar+storage provider completed the recommended phase one integration steps above in a single two-week development sprint, highlighting how easy integrating with the Leap APIs can be. The work allowed this provider to free up their operations team from the time-consuming and error-prone process of manually scheduling dispatch events, while also improving dispatch event performance.

Phase Two: Automate customer re-engagement

Within the first six months of launch, we recommended completing the following in order to improve customer conversions:

• Use the Connect API in California and New York to track incomplete Leap Connect sessions and automate timely customer re-engagement.

• Leverage the Meters API to track meters requiring partner action and automate customer engagement as needed.

Phase Three: Track event performance

Within the first six to nine months after launch, we recommend automating the following analytics use case in order to optimize event performance and drive revenue growth:

• Leverage the Analytics API to track event performance and flag underperforming meters for follow-up. Integrate event performance, and optionally raw interval data, into relevant internal systems & dashboards.

Following this phasing ensures that you are getting the benefits of automation across all four stages of the customer meter journey to scale your grid services offerings, while also limiting the number of required development resources.

Stay tuned for the next blog in our series, where we’ll look at the automation journey for our C&I partners. If you have any questions in the meantime, please reach out to partners@leap.energy.