Vermont's single largest source of electricity generation is no longer a dam, a gas plant, or a wind farm. It's over 10,000 home batteries, working together as one coordinated resource that utility Green Mountain Power calls a virtual power plant — and as of this summer, it's bigger than anything else on the state's grid.
That's not a rounding-error headline. It's a preview of where every rebate program that pays you for enrolling a battery — including BC Hydro's Peak Saver here at home — is heading, and it's worth understanding even if you're nowhere near Vermont.
The numbers
Residential batteries make up more than half of that 110 MW, alongside utility-scale batteries, EV chargers, hydro, and commercial buildings that can flex their power draw. According to Electrek's reporting, the residential-battery share alone gives Vermont "the highest storage-to-state-power ratio in New England." Green Mountain Power says the program saved customers an estimated $6 million during a single heat wave in July 2026, on top of $11 million the year before.
How Vermont homeowners get in
Green Mountain Power runs two enrollment paths: lease two Tesla Powerwalls for $55/month (or $5,500 upfront for a 10-year term), or bring your own already-installed battery and receive an upfront incentive to enroll it. Either way, the utility can draw stored power from your battery during peak-demand events, and you keep backup power for outages in exchange.
Why this matters if you're not in Vermont
This is the same basic trade as BC Hydro's Peak Saver program: enroll your battery, let the utility briefly draw from it during high-demand hours, get paid for it. Vermont is just running the experiment at a scale most Canadian and other U.S. programs haven't reached yet — and the results (a virtual power plant outsizing every physical plant in the state, real dollar savings during a real heat wave) are the strongest public proof yet that these programs work as advertised, not just on paper.
It also points at where things are going. As more homes install batteries through rebate programs, utilities have an increasingly strong incentive to sweeten enrollment incentives — a bigger aggregated battery fleet is cheaper for them than building new peaking plants. If Peak Saver-style programs follow Vermont's trajectory, the payouts for enrolling are more likely to grow than shrink.
Bottom line: A home battery rebate today isn't just a one-time incentive — it's a ticket into a program that utilities have a growing financial reason to make more attractive over time. Vermont is showing what that looks like at scale.
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