Green Mountain Power details residential battery leases, mobile storage and microgrid pilots to cut peaks and boost resilience

Green Mountain Power on March 28 told the Vermont House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee that it has deployed distributed battery systems with about 4,500 customers and now aggregates roughly 70 megawatts of battery capacity to help shave system peaks, provide backup power and support local reliability projects.

The presentation to the committee by Josh Kastinga, a Green Mountain Power representative, outlined the utility’s residential Energy Storage Service (ESS) lease program, a customer-owned “bring your own device” option, income-qualified installations funded through an ESAP grant program, the Grafton pilot of concentrated home storage in an outage-prone area, and a mobile “Nomad” trailer battery that can be moved to keep towns or commercial customers energized during planned work on transmission lines.

Kastinga said the combined residential battery deployments give GMP “about 70 megawatts of power capacity from these battery storage systems,” and put that number in context against the utility’s 2024 system peak of about 660 megawatts. He told the committee the storage fleet can act as an aggregated resource—sometimes called a virtual power plant—participating in ISO New England markets such as frequency regulation and returning revenue to customers through rates.

The ESS lease provides equipment and installation to a host customer for roughly $55 a month (or an option for a one-time payment), Kastinga said, adding that the host receives household backup power while the utility can use the battery for grid services and peak reduction. “The host…