Frontier Forum: Unlocking next-generation VPPs

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May 6, 2025

Ben Brown, CEO of Renew Home, has transitioned from designing vintage demand response programs to pioneering a modern virtual power plant system. He discusses how AI and smart devices empower households to save energy while seamlessly supporting the grid. With projections showing a significant increase in grid demand, he emphasizes his approach as a viable, cost-effective alternative to building new power plants. Brown highlights the importance of consumer control in energy management, achieving impressive opt-in rates through personalized strategies.

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INSIGHT

Limitations of Traditional Demand Response

Traditional demand response focused on limited peak hours yearly and caused user frustration due to lack of control.
Continuous, personalized demand response can leverage many more hours with less disruption and greater customer satisfaction.

ADVICE

Continuous Demand Response Strategy

Personalize and control energy use by anticipating household habits and thermal characteristics.
Subtle, asynchronous optimizations keep homes comfortable while shifting energy demand continuously.

INSIGHT

Customer Control Boosts Engagement

Giving customers control in demand response leads to higher opt-in and sustained engagement rates.
Renew Home achieves about 75% opt-in of Nest users versus traditional programs' 10-20%.

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In the mid-2000s, Ben Brown started his career designing demand response programs that relied on pagers and telephones. Today, as Renew Home's CEO, he's leveraging AI and tens of millions of connected smart devices to help households save energy and create an entirely new approach to grid management.

Renew Home is building a new kind of virtual power plant that moves beyond occasional emergency events toward continuous, subtle energy shifts across millions of connected households.

"The biggest evolution is connected devices," explains Brown, who previously led energy product development at Google after its acquisition of Nest.

During his time at Google Labs working on large language models, Brown also witnessed firsthand the massive energy demands that AI would place on our grid.

This realization, combined with his work on smart home technology, led Brown to envision a new approach to virtual power plants – one built on subtle, personalized adjustments across millions of homes rather than occasional disruptive events.

“There's actually a lot more value continuously throughout the year, over hundreds of hours where customers can save more money by helping support the grid."

With DOE projections showing a 200 gigawatt peak on the US grid by 2030, Renew Home's approach offers a compelling alternative to building new power plants. By focusing on customer control and personalization, they've achieved 75% opt-in rates, while creating a resource that is far cheaper than gas peakers.

In this episode, recorded as part of a live Frontier Forum, Stephen Lacey talks with Ben Brown about the next generation of virtual power plants.

How does Renew Home’s approach differ from demand response or battery-based VPPs? And what role can it play in addressing the grid’s urgent needs?

This is a partner episode, brought to you by Renew Home. It was recorded live as part of Latitude Media's Frontier Forum series. Watch the full video to hear more details about next-generation VPPs.