Flexibility as a service: Can Octopus's acquisition of Uplight finally make US residential VPPs work?

Millions of enrolled devices, 60 utilities and the participation rate gap that's been embarrassing the US market for a decade.

US residential virtual power plants have been a promising idea that's consistently underdelivered, participation rates below 5%, fragmented apps, siloed programmes and utilities that have simply never had to compete for a customer's attention. Meanwhile, Octopus Energy has built the world's largest residential VPP in the UK, with EV driver participation rates of 50 to 70%. The question has always been whether that model can travel to a market where most customers have no supplier choice at all.

Bridget van Dorsten speaks with Nick Chaset, CEO of Octopus Energy US, about the acquisition that represents Octopus's biggest bet on answering that question: a majority stake in Uplight alongside Schneider Electric, giving Octopus access to established relationships with more than 60 US utilities, including eight of the ten largest.

Nick argues the participation gap isn't really a cultural problem or a technology problem. It's a regulatory design problem. US flexibility programmes have been built device by device, forcing consumers to juggle multiple apps and enrolments and in some cases prohibiting them from combining assets across programmes. Octopus's answer is one app, a 30-second sign-up and a value proposition framed entirely around what consumers actually care about: lower bills. Can that translate through a utility partnership channel rather than a direct retail relationship?

The conversation also tackles the data centre dimension. Nick makes the case that residential flexibility isn't a separate story from the large load interconnection challenge, it's part of the solution. If utilities can statistically guarantee load reductions from tens of thousands of enrolled homes during peak hours, they may be able to connect larger data centre loads at smaller interconnection points. And in many hours when a data centre might otherwise ramp down, it could simply be cheaper to pay consumers to flex instead.

Octopus's model is built on trust earned through direct consumer relationships. Can that translate through a utility intermediary at scale, across 60 different utility cultures without losing what makes it work?

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