For many businesses, managing electricity costs means paying close attention to consumption and shifting energy-intensive operations to off-peak hours whenever possible.
They can also be rewarded with utility rate incentives for voluntarily reducing power during times of peak demand.As a leading Virtual Power Plant platform, with more than $1.4 billion returned to customers through demand response and market participation programs since 2015,CPower helps companies identify and participate in these programs.
At the same time, our Virtual UtilityⓇ allows them to generate and store power at their site so they can take advantage of them more fully.
Businesses with on-site generation assets, such as a virtual power plant or e2’s Virtual Utility, can qualify for multiple market programs simultaneously, participating more frequently, significantly increasing their savings, and earning more in incentives, said Kellen Bollettino, Senior National Account Executive at CPower.
In PJM specifically, he estimated a qualified on-site generation asset can generate approximately $200,000 to $250,000 per megawatt annually from program participation alone. That’s before factoring in additional event-based earnings.
We recently sat down with Bollettino and Brad Widdup, Senior Director of Distributed Generation Growth at CPower, to discuss the trends they’re seeing in the marketplace and why more companies are exploring these options.
Here are the most important takeaways from that conversation.
Customers are already seeing the impact in significantly higher utility bills, and brownouts or full-on power outages may not be far behind.
In the PJM market, which serves more than 67 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C., annual capacity auction prices have risen at a pace few anticipated.
According to PJM's published auction results, the clearing price for the 2024/25 delivery year was $28.92 per megawatt-day. The 2027/28 auction hit the FERC-approved price cap at $333.44 per megawatt-day, according to Utility Dive, and the market still fell short of its reliability target for the second consecutive auction.
As Kellen Bollettino at CPower explained, the underlying trends show no sign of reversing.
"There's been a significant jump in the capacity cost associated with the PJM market due to AI and data center load causing constraints on the grid, as well as some rule changes PJM put in place,” he said. “We don't see a day when it's going to change back to a level set, so this could be the case for the next five years."
During a recent winter storm, energy prices in some regions jumped from $200 to $1,800 per megawatt-hour in just one day, according to Reuters.
Markets along the East Coast face similar pressure from population increases, severe weather events and constrained supply.
PJM has warned of possible power shortages as soon as 2027, driven primarily by data center growth outpacing new generation capacity.
According to NERC's 2025 Long-Term Reliability Assessment, 13 of 23 North American assessment areas — including PJM, MISO, and ERCOT — now face elevated or high risks of outages over the next five years.
For manufacturers, cold storage operators, data centers, and other businesses where downtime is measured in dollars per minute, this creates operational concerns.
Power failures can have significant consequences and costs in these mission-critical industries.
Even short-term events like voltage sags, can trigger equipment damage, costly restarts, and supply chain disruptions with lingering effects.
Emergency demand response programs exist because the grid is constrained, and when enough customers participate by voluntarily reducing their consumption, it can prevent rolling blackouts or widespread outages across an entire utility zone.
The increasing volatility of the grid opens opportunities for companies to take advantage of these programs and explore new sources of power that give them greater flexibility.
CPower helps companies find the right programs to participate in, enrolls them and coordinates dispatches so when a curtailment event occurs, sites can respond and capture the incentive.
The company assumes the operational and financial risk of program participation on the customer's behalf.
"There's no out-of-pocket cost, so people can sign up and participate in our programs, and they don't have to put any money up front,” Bollentino said. “We take that all on.”
Most companies enrolled in demand response today participate only in emergency curtailment — a limited number of hours per year when the grid reaches a critical threshold.
Many demand response customers only curtail power for a few hours a year, but have the potential to participate in additional programs increasing incentives/savings with targeted curtailment hours.
That’s where Virtual Utility changes the equation.
Powered by our patented R3DiⓇ System — self-contained, stackable units that combine natural gas-fired power generation with fast-discharge battery storage, starting at 1 megawatt — Virtual Utility gives facilities a reliable source of on-site power that can be deployed at precisely the right moment.
Before deployment, our team works with each customer to understand their goals, power needs, and operational constraints.
Together, we build a playbook for when it makes sense to rely on their own power rather than the utility.
From there, our AI-powered monitoring platform and a team of energy experts track grid conditions, market pricing, and weather events around the clock. When conditions align with a customer’s preset strike prices — thresholds that define when curtailment is financially worth it — the R3Di is deployed automatically, capturing financial incentives without disrupting operations.
CPower works closely with our team to help customers understand what financial incentives are available and when to trigger R3Di System deployment. The result is a coordinated response that strengthens the grid, protects the facility, and generates revenue.
Because of the increase in weather-related events and grid capacity issues, along with available tax incentives, companies that invest in energy storage projects like Virtual Utility often see returns much faster.
For instance, a mid-sized industrial facility that deployed Virtual Utility reduced peak load charges from 1,968 kW to 7.4 kW and cut Unforced Capacity (UCAP) charges by over 99%, saving more than $180,000 annually.
e2Companies works with CPower to build site-specific financial models for qualifying facilities — analyzing location, load profile, and operational constraints to show what demand response participation could realistically return, and how that stacks up against the investment in Virtual Utility.
When the numbers make sense, we develop a deployment playbook together, set the strike prices that define your participation thresholds, and our team handles the rest.
To find out if your facility qualifies, schedule a consultation with our team.