Connecticut’s Senate has passed a bill targeting the deployment of 1,000MW of energy storage by the end of 2030, which when signed into law by the state’s governor will make it the eighth state jurisdiction in the US so far to introduce either a target or mandate for energy storage.

As society moves away from centralised fossil fuel generators to increasing shares of distributed renewable energy resources, the idea that customers’ homes could become host to virtual power plants (VPPs), joining the dots between electricity supply and demand across the grid, has gradually gathered traction. Andy Colthorpe speaks with Suleman Khan CEO of Swell Energy, which has raised nearly half a billion dollars in financing for solar-plus-storage VPPs in 14,000 homes across California, New York and Hawaii.