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The most robust virtual power plant (VPP) program in the United States is running out of funding at a time when the grid needs it more than ever.

Launched in 2022, California's Demand Side Grid Support (DSGS) program coordinates more than 1 gigawatt (GW) of dispatchable capacity from more than 200,000 unique customer sites enrolled across every single legislative district in the state. The program leverages customer-sited resources like home batteries, solar systems, and smart thermostats, bringing clean, flexible, and responsible energy resources online during grid emergencies. Since the DSGS program began, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) has avoided blackouts and hasn't issued a single Flex Alert, its call for voluntary energy conservation, in more than four years.

Despite its impact, the DSGS program was never intended to be permanent, and California's last legislative session ended without dedicating new funding. While still operational through the end of the year, its fate in 2027 and beyond is uncertain at a critical moment: the nexus of rising electricity demand, more frequent extreme weather, and mounting affordability challenges. 

This edition of DTECH's Factor This Policycast, presented in partnership with national business association Advanced Energy United, explores the future of the DSGS program. Hosted by Factor This content director Paul Gerke, the episode features special guests Brandon García, Advanced Energy United's California director, and Lauren Nevitt, senior director of California policy and energy markets at Sunrun. 

They react to a new report evaluating how VPPs can lower utility costs and share details of recent record-breaking VPP dispatches. This episode of the Factor This Policycast also addresses critical questions including: Can California's policymakers establish a durable, long-term market pathway to support the nation's leading VPP? What role do distributed energy resources (DERs) play in the state's energy future? And what can California's next Governor do to buoy DSGS before it can't pay its participants?

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Utilities face mounting pressure to improve reliability and reduce power outage frequency while meeting rising electricity demand.

For the Littleton Electric Light & Water Departments (LELWD), Hendrix Aerial Cable Systems (ACS) by Marmon Utility has become an important part of building a stronger, more resilient overhead network for today and tomorrow.

In this episode of the Factor This podcast, host Paul Gerke is joined by Ted Gardner, application engineer for overhead solutions at Marmon Utility, and David Ketchen, assistant general manager of LELWD. Together, they explore how electrical utility providers can strengthen reliability through thoughtful distribution system design, discuss the role Hendrix ACS plays in Littleton Electric's reliability strategy, and share practical insights for utilities facing today's evolving infrastructure challenges.

Ketchen reveals the factors that led Littleton to adopt Hendrix ACS, the performance improvements the utility has experienced over time, and how the system has helped reduce outages in tree-heavy and neighborhood service areas. Together, Ted and David examine the operational benefits of improved reliability, readiness for greater demand, and long-term system hardening that supports both utility operations and customer satisfaction.

As Hendrix celebrates 75 years of serving the utility industry, this conversation also highlights the value of engineering expertise, collaborative partnerships, and proven field performance in helping utilities modernize their overhead distribution systems. Whether you're a utility executive, engineer, operations professional, or public power leader, this episode offers practical insights into strengthening distribution system reliability and building a more resilient electric grid.

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While utilities of all types and sizes have recognized that affordability is a top-of-mind issue and are doing what they can to ease customer bill pressure, few fully grasp how ratepayers interpret these rising costs. When monthly bills increase, most customers focus on the name on the envelope rather than the complex mix of market forces, policy mandates, and grid modernization efforts that are ultimately driving those increases. Closing this gap requires energy providers to rethink traditional corporate messaging and actively show how system investments deliver value to people in the present while also enabling long-term resilience.

It's something that Greg Cornett, President of Rhode Island Energy, has positioned as a cornerstone of his leadership strategy. It’s also something he’s written about and talked about at events like DTECH Northeast, underscoring the importance of the topic across the sector.

Once again, Cornett is going to be taking the stage at DTECH Northeast as part of a keynote panel with executive leaders from Eversource and the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities. Before doing so, we connected with Cornett to capture some of his insights about this strategy, why it’s important to treat public trust as a vital operational asset, and more.

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This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week's episode features special guest Benton Graham from Grist, who discusses the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority's plans to electrify Boston’s Fairmount Line with battery-powered trains.

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Christopher Galarza, a longtime chef and co-founder of EcoChef, which certifies sustainable commercial kitchens. Christopher co-authored a new peer-reviewed study and recruited most of the kitchens in it, finding that 70% of gas-fired restaurant kitchens had nitrogen dioxide levels above EPA and WHO safety limits, even with commercial ventilation. He says working in all-electric kitchens was the first time in his career he could do what he loved without feeling like he was dying. Congratulations, Christopher!

This Week in Cleantech — October 9, 2026

1. The energy transition is starting to feed itself — Reuters
2. How to keep the lights on in an electrified world — The Financial Times
3. What if the world hadn't built wind and solar? — The Climate Brink
4. US Solar Panel Makers Try to Catch China With a Big Leap in Technology — The New York Times
5. The future of commuter rail could be taking shape in Boston — Grist

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PJM Interconnection, the largest wholesale electricity market and grid operator in the United States, is at a crossroads. 

Demand is surging across its footprint, accelerated by the needs of artificial intelligence data centers, and PJM is struggling to keep up- to put it lightly- spurring some rather existential examinations of the grid operator’s processes, markets, and even its governance. It’s clear that changes are needed, but what those changes should be and who should have input- like PJM states, for example- is much murkier.

There’s no time to waste. PJM predicts a 6.8 gigawatt (GW) capacity shortfall as soon as 2028, underscoring the need to bring more generation online as soon as possible. Many of the 67 million customers under PJM’s 13-state-plus-Washington-D.C.- purview would agree. They’re seeing electricity prices march upward, in part because recent power auctions got so out of control that PJM, with federal approval, had to cap them.

Interconnection bottlenecks and market barriers have also inhibited deployment of some of the cheapest and often quickest-to-power solutions, like renewables, energy storage, and demand-side resources. PJM is trying to make it easier for data center developers to come online with their own power supply- but how should that work?

This episode of the Factor This Policycast, presented in partnership with Advanced Energy United, tackles the PJM energy emergency. How can the nation’s largest grid operator modernize its operations in time to avoid a capacity cliff while simultaneously satisfying a diverse group of stakeholders clamoring for affordability?

Hosted by Factor This content director Paul Gerke, the show features special guests Adam Stern of clean energy developer Clearway Energy and Kimaya Abreu of virtual power plant operator Voltus, alongside Advanced Energy United senior director Jon Gordon, a nationally sought-after PJM expert. The assemblage addresses PJM's looming capacity shortfall, identifies roadblocks to speed-to-power, and opines on how to mitigate the impacts of large load growth on the system. Also up for debate: PJM's backstop auction, interconnection queue, and governance.

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Grid resilience isn’t a new concept, but the way utilities achieve it is changing dramatically. Traditionally, hardening the grid meant building bigger physical infrastructure. But as Switched Source CEO Charles Murray has outlined, meeting upcoming grid demands cost-effectively requires utilities to think differently and embrace new capabilities.

Heavy capital hardware upgrades are no longer a standalone fix. Today, grid resilience is all about operational agility and dynamic power-flow control to keep the power on. But what does doing so mean on a practical level? What happens when high-level operational intelligence is paired with real-time grid automation? How should utilities newly think about their resilience strategy? On the latest episode of the Factor This Podcast, we caught up with Murray to get answers to these questions and much more.  

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This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey.

This week's episode features special guest Jillian Goodman from Heatmap, who breaks down the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, a new permitting reform package meant to lower energy costs and make it easier to build infrastructure. 

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is James Worden, founder of Worden Marine. James has been building solar-powered vehicles since the 1980s, starting with a wood-and-cardboard solar go-kart that won the Massachusetts state science fair. He went on to help start MIT's Solar Electric Vehicle Team and co-founded Solectria with his late wife, Anita. Now he's taking that vision to the water. His startup's TruSolar20 boat, named Anita in her honor, can run all day on six solar panels at about eight miles an hour, and a bigger version built for ferries and river tours is on the way. Congratulations, James!

This Week in Cleantech — October 5, 2026 

1. Why Won’t the Clean Energy Industry Play Dirty? — Washington Monthly
2. Trump Sharply Scales Back Fuel Economy Rules for New Cars — The New York Times
3. Fix it or trash it? How to decide how long to keep your car and home appliances. — The Washington Post
4. Plug Power Inks Electrolyzer Deal for Denmark Jet Fuel Project — Bloomberg
5. The Senate’s Big Bipartisan Permitting Deal, Explained — Heatmap News

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We get excited about new technologies that have the capability to transform utility operations, which is easy to do because the value they can create is real. However, the irony is that these innovations are often the least important part of the effort to create that value. Real efficiencies, especially ones that can scale, are driven by people and processes. Unlocking the true value of any innovation requires an independent, vendor-agnostic strategy that cuts across technical, business, and regulatory domains.

And that’s exactly why Dash Power Partners was created.

Co-founded by Dr. Damir Novosel, who is also the CEO and a recognized pioneer in power grid reliability, Dash Power provides services and solutions for utilities, ISOs, developers, data centers, and more. The company pairs deep technical expertise with leadership from experienced executives like Chris Root, who brings over 45 years of utility sector leadership.

Dr. Novosel and Root will be bringing this expertise to DTECH Northeast in Boston this November, where they’ll lead the Strategic Alignment & Scalable Energy Solutions workshop that is designed to deliver actionable strategies rather than high-level theory. We connected with both and with Wayne Bishop, Executive Vice President of Energy at Clarion Events, for an in-depth interview to explore some of the grid modernization challenges that the energy sector is working through and how they’re specifically impacting the Northeast.

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This Week in Cleantech is a weekly podcast covering the most impactful stories in clean energy and climate featuring Paul Gerke of Factor This and Tigercomm’s Mike Casey. On this episode, Clarion Events Content Director Jeremiah Karpowicz is filling in for Paul Gerke.

This week's episode features special guest David Fickling from Bloomberg, who discusses how the Bangladesh's garment industry is coping with the Iran war's disruption of the energy supply chain. 

This week’s “Cleantecher of the Week” is Dr. Joe Romm, a physicist and one of the most influential voices in the fight against climate change, who passed away unexpectedly this month. Joe served at the Department of Energy under President Clinton and turned his focus to climate after his brother lost his home in Hurricane Katrina. He founded the blog Climate Progress, which Time called the web's most influential climate-change blog, and he was chief science advisor for the Emmy-winning series Years of Living Dangerously. Rest in peace, Joe. 

This Week in Cleantech — September 25, 2026 

1. The New Clean Tech Meta and Google Are Turning to Power AI — Bloomberg
2. Senate inches closer to US infrastructure permitting reform bill — Reuters
3. Africa's cement boom signals next great shift in global energy use — Reuters
4. Iran war causes global pain at the pump — Axios
5. Your $30 Jeans Are Running Out of Cheap Power in Bangladesh — Bloomberg

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Utilities and grid operators face immense pressure to meet rising electricity demand, harden systems against extreme weather, upgrade and replace aging infrastructure, adapt to changing state and federal policies, and keep rates affordable. It's a juggling act, and with all of those balls in the air, the 'old-school' utility method of building more supply-side solutions just doesn't cut it anymore.

As a result, distributed energy resources (DERs), or customer-sited technologies, are moving beyond the margins of reliability planning to the center of attention. This episode of the Factor This Policycast, presented in partnership with national business association Advanced Energy United, explores how mostly behind-the-meter tools like batteries, smart thermostats, backup generators, microgrids, rooftop solar, and flexible load can be aggregated and operated as dependable grid assets.

Extending a conversation that began at DTECH Reliability & Resiliency 2026 in Chicago, Illinois, moderator Paul Gerke leads a discussion alongside Emma Heins, policy principal at Advanced Energy United, about what it takes to scale virtual power plants and other DER programs. The conversation, featuring Bart Jackson of Sunrun, ENERGYHUB's Maxwell Burke-Scoll, and Kahri Gerke at Alliant Energy, highlights practical lessons from states and utilities moving past pilots to full-scale implementation, focusing on how DERs can improve reliability, reduce peak demand, support resilience during emergencies, and lower customer costs. Also on the table: utility partnerships, market design, customer enrollment, dispatch performance, interconnection, data visibility, and compensation.

Energy policy on your mind? Check out all episodes of the Factor This Policycast