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Elastic Energy seeks 500‑home Connecticut pilot to create feeder‑level flexibility with plug‑and‑play energy routers
Summary
Elastic Energy proposed a 500‑home, 18‑month pilot across three Hartford nodes plus New Haven and New London to install plug‑and‑play “energy routers” that make distributed devices dispatchable and create roughly 300 kW of verifiable, dispatch‑ready flexible load for feeder‑level congestion relief.
Elastic Energy CEO Ben Hilborn presented a proposal for an 18‑month, 500‑home pilot in Connecticut that would deploy the company’s “energy router” at customer premises to aggregate dispatchable load and provide feeder‑level congestion management. Hilborn said the technology is OEM‑agnostic and compatible with batteries, HVAC, EV chargers and water heaters, and that the system is robust to connectivity and grid disturbances.
The proposed deployment targets three nodes in Hartford and one node each in New Haven and New London; Elastic would recruit participants through community partners, local solar/electric installers and potentially anonymized EDC customer lists. Hilborn emphasized equity goals: the pilot aims for at least 30% LMI (low‑ and moderate‑income) household participation and seeks to prioritize distressed municipalities and affordable multifamily dwellings.
Elastic said the pilot’s immediate objective is roughly 300 kW of verifiable dispatchable capacity that is automated and resilient to communications interruptions. The platform includes a consumer app and a portal for utilities or states; the company requested access to home area network (HAN) smart‑meter data for real‑time measurements and stated that smart‑meter/HAN access would be an important implementation requirement.
Hilborn described metrics for the pilot that include kilowatts shifted per home, peak loading reduction at targeted nodes, consumer bill impacts and participant satisfaction; he also highlighted non‑energy data value for utilities (detection of feeder health, planning inputs). PURA staff asked about rate design and whether time‑of‑use rates or AMI/HAN access are prerequisites for household bill savings. Hilborn said material bill impacts require pricing arbitrage (TOU or similar) but the pilot can still demonstrate feeder‑level congestion relief independently.
Why it matters: the proposal aims to turn distributed customer‑side devices into a feeder‑level resource that can reduce costly distribution upgrades and lower nodal congestion while prioritizing enrollment in underserved communities.
What’s next: Elastic will respond to staff follow‑up questions and said it can work with EDCs on customer lists, targeting and connectivity for HAN access where available.
