\u201cResi-Station is the first big step towards opening the door to a massively transactive grid,\u201d DeVries said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In some ways, Resi-Station is positioned to follow in the footsteps of companies like Airbnb. \u201cAirbnb is now four or five times larger than Marriott in terms of the number of units, and Airbnb did that in just a few years,\u201d DeVries said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resi-Station\u2019s proposition is similar. \u201cThis brings commercial scale to distributed power plants,\u201d DeVries said. \u201cWithin a few years, almost everyone in the country will think of their appliances, their car chargers and the energy use in their homes as something that they can make money from when they are not using them \u2013 kind of like the way that people think of Airbnb as a way to make money from their guest bedroom,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At scale, Resi-Station could reach 5 GWh of energy conservation, SIP and OhmConnect said, adding that this is equal to the full amount of California\u2019s energy shortfall during this summer\u2019s blackouts. It is also the equivalent of not burning 3.8 million pounds of coal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The energy conservation that Resi-Station could provide is also five times what OhmConnect provided this past summer when millions of Californians faced rolling blackouts during a heatwave-induced grid emergency that left public utility systems struggling to keep up with surging demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between August 13th and 20th, OhmConnect toggled its customers\u2019 smart devices and appliances off and on to reduce almost one GWh of total energy usage, which helped avoid additional blackouts. For their help in reducing stress on California\u2019s grid, OhmConnect paid out roughly $1 million to its users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Immediately after last August\u2019s rolling blackouts, signups for OhmConnect\u2019s demand response program tripled. On the user end, a desire to help prevent blackouts, pandemic-related economic challenges and the fact that California residential power prices, at almost 21 cents per kWh, are significantly higher than the 13 cents a kWh national average all helped drive interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For utilities, particularly those that were skeptical of residential demand response systems and uncomfortable with OhmConnect engaging directly with their customers, this summer\u2019s experience helped bring them around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey [now] see us as a source of much-needed supply, so that they are not in a position of having to do blackouts. They also trust us more now because we were successful in supporting the grid at scale during the flex alert,\u201d DeVries said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to DeVries, Resi-Station is just the beginning. \u201cOver the next several years, OhmConnect will expand its capacity in California to 2GW\u2026 That\u2019s critical for the future of our grid,\u201d he noted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n