Residential Virtual Power Plants

FranklinWH is expanding residential virtual power plants as home batteries increasingly become potential resources for supporting electricity grids. Hawaii Energy Connection has installed 1,800 FranklinWH aPower battery units across more than 1,000 Hawaiian homes. The systems combine battery storage, intelligent energy management and solar integration, allowing households to store electricity for peak periods and outages. A proposed virtual power plant program on Oahu could also coordinate thousands of residential batteries to send stored electricity back to the grid when needed.

The model could create additional value from batteries that homeowners already use for backup power and solar management. Compensating households for grid services may encourage greater participation while giving utilities access to distributed energy capacity without relying exclusively on centralized infrastructure. For FranklinWH and installers, expanding virtual power plant programs could also increase demand for grid-connected residential storage systems.