Stephanie Cole is the marketing director at Leap, a platform for building and scaling virtual power plants.
The promise of virtual power plants is real, but we’re leaving much of their potential on the table — not because the technology isn’t ready, but because participation is still treated like a separate customer chore.
In 2024, Wood Mackenzie projected that 217 gigawatts of distributed energy resource capacity will be added in the U.S. by 2028. That’s millions of batteries, EV chargers, smart thermostats, building automation systems and other grid-interactive assets capable of providing flexible, cost-effective grid support.
But unless we fix how customers enroll in demand response, much of that flexible capacity will never support the grid when it’s needed most. Even with financial incentives, sign-up rates for many demand response programs remain stubbornly low, sometimes in the single digits of eligible devices.
Across the U.S., about one in five smart thermostats now participate in demand response programs, according to a 2025 Parks Associates and Resideo report. That’s meaningful progress compared with a few years ago , but still it leaves the vast majority of connected devices sitting idle — a patchwork of underutilized smart devices that could be helping balance the grid, but aren’t.
The issue isn’t that customers dislike participating. Modern demand response providers are increasingly good at maintaining comfort and customer control. A Renew Home white paper covering a program with more than 5.2 million participants found that only 4% of customers overrode events.
The problem, however, is getting customers enrolled in the first place. Most residential demand response programs today require customers to complete a multi-step enrollment process: review terms, authorize data sharing, click through forms, confirm via email. At every step, potential participants drop off. It’s customer attrition by friction.
So how do we close that participation gap? Make enrollment the default.
Default enrollment changes the math
Based on Leap’s data from enrolling over 400,000 unique energy assets into DR programs, we’ve seen that default sign-up models can achieve participation rates as high as 95%, compared to less than 10% in many opt-in programs. That’s a transformational difference.
Default enrollment replaces the traditional opt-in model with an opt-out approach. Instead of requiring customers to complete a separate sign-up process, grid services enrollment becomes part of a device provider’s standard energy offering, built in alongside default energy efficiency settings that customers can adjust at any time.
Customers receive a clear notification that they are enrolled, along with simple, immediate options to decline the program or skip individual events. No maze of authorization forms and clicks.
Behavioral science has long shown that people tend to stick with the default option. Whether it’s retirement savings plans or plant-based food options, making your preferred action the default choice dramatically increases participation.
Community choice aggregators have already demonstrated this effect in an energy context. Defaulting residents into renewable supply options has produced overwhelmingly positive results. The same principle applies to grid services participation.
When enrollment barriers disappear, VPPs stop being a niche add-on and start functioning as mainstream energy infrastructure, delivering flexibility for grid operators, greater resilience during extreme weather, and lower costs across the board.
Good default enrollment is built on customer transparency
Resistance to default enrollment is more about historical blunders than problems with the model itself. There are real examples of poorly communicated DR events that eroded customer trust, and prompted some lingering caution from providers. But the lesson from those cases isn’t that default enrollment is wrong; it’s that poorly designed programs are.
Now that more grid services programs — like California’s Demand Side Grid Response and ERCOT’s Emergency Response Service — are allowing enrollment using basic customer address information rather than requiring separate utility authorization, a practical barrier to default enrollment is being removed. Regulators in other markets should establish similar frameworks that enable frictionless sign-up while preserving customer rights to opt out.
Done right, default enrollment looks like this: Customers know they’re enrolled and understand what participation means. Providers clearly explain what the program does, what customers receive in return, and how to decline or skip individual events. Then they share results, including how demand response reduced emissions, supported the grid, and/or delivered financial rewards.
Participation is effortless but should never be mandatory. That combination — transparency, ease, and genuine customer benefit — is what makes default enrollment sustainable.
Virtual power plants are one of the most powerful tools we have for building a clean, reliable, and affordable energy system. The fastest way to make them mainstream is to make participation effortless for every household with a connected device.
The opinions represented in this contributed article are solely those of the author, and do not reflect the views of Latitude Media or any of its staff.
