Eight Minutes Podcast: VPPs and Commercial Buildings as Grid Assets

Edo co-founder, Courtney Blodgett, recently sat down with Paul Schuster for the Eight Minutes to discuss how Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) are transforming commercial buildings into vital grid assets. In this interview, Courtney shares insights on how Edo is harnessing the power of commercial buildings to support grid stability, reduce carbon emissions, and drive energy efficiency—all while creating value for building owners and utilities alike.

PAUL SCHUSTER – This is 8 minutes – a podcast helping you understand the energy and climate challenge in just a few minutes.

I’m your host Paul Schuster.

The shift to a decarbonized economy requires a lot of electricity. And while utilities are doing their best for new solar and wind and other renewable power assets online, they’re also looking at newer, more novel strategies. One of those approaches, virtual power plants.

VPPs are coming into their own. They take all those smaller distributed assets such as batteries, thermostats, even VVs, and aggregate them together to achieve enough scale to maybe avoid having to build another gas power plant.

I’m joined today by Courtney Blodgett, Director of Strategy at Edo Energy. Edo is a VPP solutions provider that focuses on commercial buildings and developing a portfolio of distributed assets that can be used by the grid in flexible ways. I’m hoping she can help us understand a bit more about the role that VPPs play in decarbonizing the power grid.

PAUL SCHUSTER –Courtney, welcome to the podcast.

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Thanks Paul. It’s a pleasure to be here.

PAUL SCHUSTER –Well, I’m excited to have you on this as you and I have been discussing over the last couple of weeks as we’ve been preparing for this.

VPPs is a hot topic right now. Virtual power plants is getting a lot of attention within the sustainability decarbonization and broadly the utility space.

As it goes forward, I think the DOE actually says that in order to meet all the electrification needs that we are going to require as an economy by 2030 by 2035 or whatever, there’s

going to be 200 gigawatts of additional capacity that’s going to need to come online and virtual power plants could meet 10 to 20 percent of that and they could help us avoid billions of dollars of investment into a power grid that’s already stretched very thin.

Personally, I’m super excited about this. Really excited about digging into this with you.

Let’s start though with an introduction as to who Courtney is and your background because you’ve got a fascinating personal history as well that I’d love to share with the audience.

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Great.

Yeah, thanks.

So as you mentioned, I’m Director of Strategy and I’m one of the founders of EDO.

So EDO was officially launched in 2021 and I’ve been working on the company since 2019. But before that, I had worked in clean innovation and technology for about 20 years.

So I started my career working on renewable energy and energy efficiency in developing countries. So spent a lot of time working on biomass, biogas, small scale hydro, solar back in the day when it was really expensive. So in China, in Brazil, in Indonesia.

And then I had the amazing opportunity to work for the United Nations in Rwanda. So I was based in the government of Rwanda where I helped to create programs and frameworks

to incentivize a private sector to come into Rwanda and work on renewable energy and energy efficiency. Amazing opportunity and really kind of eye opening in terms of the impacts of climate change.

And this was 15 or so years ago at this point and just how farmers had this really deep understanding of climate change in a way that those of us that sit in kind of air conditioned

buildings don’t necessarily understand it. And so really cemented my passion around trying to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and trying to do it in an equitable way.

I eventually moved back to the US and I was a venture capitalist for a little while working for a family office for Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft and investing.

And tech companies mainly working in South Texas or in Africa. And then just realized I’m really built to create.

So came back over to the entrepreneurship side of things and started working at McKinstry, which is one of the parent companies of Edo.

McKinstry is a commercial building mechanical electrical and energy provider.

I knew nothing about commercial buildings when I started there, but I did know that commercial buildings cause about 40% of all greenhouse gas emissions.

And so it was a really important part of just working on mitigating our impact on the climate. So yeah, that was in 2019 and then helped to spend Edo out of McKenstree and Avista in partnership with managing director of Edo and Hengrik Banheemart.

So been here since then.

PAUL SCHUSTER –So you’ve gone from the Rwanda and Brazilian and sub-Saharan Africa to the backwaters of the United States to try to help us figure out how to decarbonize.

I could imagine the challenges are just bigger and broader in so many different ways.

Let’s talk about Edo a little bit before we get into VPPs though, because you’d mentioned some of this connectivity between McKinstry and Avista, which is the the large western utility. What is Edo and what do you guys provide as a solution?

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Well, I’ll start with a little bit of our kind of origin story, which will help to answer the question of what it is that we do.

So Avista and McKinstry partnered on creating what is now the South Landing Eco District. So this Eco District is one of the largest net-zero campuses in the country.

And it was developed on land that was slated to be a substation that Avista was going to build, a new substation. Instead, they said, how about we partner with McKinstry and create an efficient grid interactive

campus that can respond to the grid needs. So the two companies built South Landing, which has a number of behind the meter distributed energy resources.

So it has batteries that is thermal storage, EV charging, heat pumps, solar.

And this project was so successful. They said, we really want to scale this idea of allowing commercial buildings to be part of the grid, to be flexible, efficient grid assets.

And so Edo is now the operator of South Landing. It’s our living R&D lab.

And that is our entire mission is to turn commercial buildings into virtual power plants that can help to meet the grid needs while operating in this efficient manner.

PAUL SCHUSTER –Perfect.

So that gives me a good little segue into what is a virtual power plant. Let’s hear your definition for this. And then let’s go back and forth a little bit to see if we can help define that for the audience.

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Sure.

I mean, I think you did a great job in the introduction of the thing in overview. But happy to add a little more flavor to it.

I think virtual power plants that connect most with people is around residential and home.

So utilities throughout the country have programs where you can upgrade your thermostat to a smart thermostat. And then during these peak events, which is when so think of a heat wave that’s happening.

Everybody comes home at four or five and just cranks up the air conditioning. When that happens, the grid gets stressed.

Those peak periods are when utilities are starting to sweat and they do we have enough energy to meet the needs of everybody turning on their air conditioners and fans and everything else.

And so with these residential virtual power plants, the utilities via a vendor will say, we’ll pay you if you enable us, if you have your temperature set to 68 degrees during these peak events and during say eight events per summer, we will then control your thermostat and it will set it up to 71 degrees and set to 68 degrees.

And by doing that, by reducing how much your air conditioners running, you’re reducing the impact as the grid.

So all of these homes put together look almost like a battery on the grid system. And so that is kind of what a virtual power plant looks like.

It’s an aggregation of all these different either reductions in load or use of actual batteries or EV charging.

So as we see growth of EV charging, if everybody comes home and not only turns air conditioners on, but they also plug in their EVs at 5 PM, it’s just more load on the grid.

So for EV charging, you’ll see offers by your utility. If you let us start charging your battery at 8 PM instead of 5 PM, we will pay you.

PAUL SCHUSTER –I wanted to stop you for two seconds.

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Okay.

PAUL SCHUSTER –Because I have so much to talk about.

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Okay.

PAUL SCHUSTER –But I love the analogy of EVs coming in and all charging at the same time. I actually in a previous life did some work with a large California utility that had a transformer, a large transformer on a neighborhood that would blow at 7 o’clock every night. Because everybody in that neighborhood had an EV. They would come in, they plug it in at the exact same time and the demand on the system was just too much for them to handle. And so I can see how a virtual power plant can start to shift some of that load to be a little more flexible and a little more safe and reliable for the overall grid.

What was also interesting and I wanted to dial this back and help the audience understand a little bit more about this. This aggregated, you use the analogy of a large battery, if you will, on the grid.

I wanted to dig into that a little bit because the way the US power grid is set up is, we have kind of like a base, what we call base loaded power, which is these are power plants that are generating power all the time. Hydropower, nuclear power, in a certain sense, coal power used to be a base loaded power type of facility.

But the demand on that grid isn’t always the same, right? To your point, everybody comes home, cranks up the air conditioning, all of a sudden you’ve got demand that spikes.

And so we have a whole bunch of power generating assets in the electric system that come on during those peak demand hours, right? And we call those peaker plants.

And for the most part, we can’t use renewable energy to provide peaking energy because we can’t control when the sun shines or when the wind blows. So we have to rely upon gas projects and to a certain extent today, coal projects to fill that peaking gap.

So the more that we can pull that peaking gap down and reduce the load on the peak times, it has an oversized effect on decarbonizing the electric grid.

And I wanted to get that out there, Courtney, feel free to disagree with me at any point here. But really, what we’re talking about is not just replacing the average power on the grid. We’re replacing the worst kind of power when we’re talking about virtual power plants.

COURTNEY BLODGETT –I absolutely agree with that.

And those peaker plants are often inefficient power plants. So they have kind of a higher rate of air pollution, water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and they’re often pretty expensive to run.

So we’re looking, the more that we can shift away from peaker plants, the more we can lower costs, the more that we can lower overall emissions and kind of all those negative things that come from using inefficient fossil fuel power plants.

PAUL SCHUSTER –So you talked a little bit about the residential side and reducing that load. And I’ve kind of referred to this in the past that virtual power plants are kind of like a demand response program.

You know, the evolution of a demand response program, like demand response 2.0, if you will, because what a virtual power plant does is it kind of takes that reduction in load and it puts it on steroids in a certain sense.

And not only because of the ability to adjust thermostats and adjust HVAC and those types of conditions, but being able to tap into batteries and being able to draw resources from those batteries, whether it’s a power wall at a home or within a commercial setting.

So it’s interesting how virtual power plants are starting to evolve.

I’d love to hear more about what Edo is doing at the commercial level and how that may shift from kind of those basics that you’ve outlined for us you know, as how residential homes think about this.

COURTNEY BLODGETT –So in commercial buildings, so I mean, the simplest way to explain it is that we’re doing the smart thermostat program for commercial buildings, but the reality is, there’s no simple when you’re working with commercial buildings.

So in a home, you know, you’re typically have one, maybe two smart thermostats, a couple of zones, maybe in the house and typically one boiler, electric-based heating are a really simple system that you’re controlling.

Then we go to commercial buildings where we have hundreds of pieces of equipment that help make up the heating ventilation and air conditioning or HVAC system and tens of thousands of data points being streamed from the building.

So these buildings are much more complex than a home. And so commercial buildings have a lot of untapped potential for virtual power plants. And that is partially because they are challenging to work in because of this complexity.

And so what Edo does is we kind of take this complexity and simplify it so that we are able to shift load in these commercial buildings in the same way that you would do it homes.

And we’re typically targeting commercial buildings that have what is called a building management system or a building automation system, which is kind of a centralized controls platform for the building and buildings that are greater than typically about 50,000 square feet.

So we’re looking at universities, we’re looking at schools, we’re looking at mid-size offices, medical facilities that aren’t hospitals. Hospitals are a little challenging for shifting load. You can do a lot for energy efficiency, but they’re critical facilities.

So light industrial like warehouses. We like campuses. So schools, for instance, we work with one of the largest school districts in the US as 27, it’s already 270 buildings.

And so we’re able to really map all those different buildings and then do this load shifting and shedding.

PAUL SCHUSTER –Is there a marked impact on the tenants and on comfort? And how do the building owners react to having somebody else control their environment?

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Great question.

And you mentioned a kind of demand response and the old school demand response was typically with either really large commercial buildings or with factories and a utility would literally call up the facility manager and say, hey, can you turn off half or all of your building during this peak period and we will pay you to do so?

So this very blunt instrument of just like, pull the lever, that’s it, everybody go home. And Eno is building virtual power plants that are kind of the opposite of that.

So we work in partnership with the facility manager to establish boundaries that will maintain comfort for the tenant.

And that’s a really important part of our solution is that there should be really minimal impact on the tenant. And so just explain a little bit how we’re doing load shifting and shedding.

So a lot of it will come from temperature set points and changing those. So a commercial building will often have a temperature set point of say 69 degrees to 71 degrees and the HVAC system is constantly working to maintain that temperature.

And so what we would do is we would work with a facility manager who would talk to tenants and say, are you okay that during these events the temperature set point goes from six, instead of being 69 to 71, it’s 68 to 72.

And then if this is a summer event, what we would do is we would come in and we would start cooling the building in advance of the event because we often receive 24 hours notification from utility. So we’d cool the building down to 68 degrees. And then the event starts at 68 degrees and then the building is able to ride with minimal use of the HVAC system until it gets to 72 degrees. And then it gets to 72 degrees. We start turning on pieces of the system again to cool it down.

And so we’re really thinking, how do we keep these tenants comfortable throughout this entire process?

PAUL SCHUSTER –That was gonna be part of my next question is what sort of stress on the machinery and the equipment does this implicate or whatever the right word is that I’m trying to search for there.

And what you’re suggesting here is because you’ve got some of the sophistication around, a pre-understanding as to when these events are going to happen and some weather forecasting or whatnot associated with that, you’re probably not stressing the equipment as much as you would if you’re just automatically trying to shift things back and forth on a more immediate period.

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Yeah, absolutely.

And I would say our solution has a whole reduces overall stress on the equipment. And that is because before we come in and do this load shifting and shedding, we always start with doing energy efficiency in a building.

And we do this for a number of reasons. One, it allows us to really understand the building. We pull the data, we map all the data points to understand what all these tens of thousands of data points are. And then we identify opportunities for low and no cost energy efficiency measures.

And we do that because we really believe in that in terms of reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions, we’re reducing energy consumption 10 to 30% in a building just through low and no cost energy efficiency measures.

But two, it enables us to understand properly what’s happening in a building when we’re shifting and shedding loads. So if we were trying to implement a demand response, demand flexibility event, and there was broken thermostats or broken sensors, we don’t actually know the impact on the tenant.

And you always start with this energy efficiency. And a big part of that is correcting scheduling.

For instance, some buildings are running their HVAC systems all day and all night, even though there’s nobody in there at night. And so we’re trying to understand how do we reduce the energy consumption of the building across the board? And that reduces the use of the HVAC equipment throughout the building’s lifetime.

And then when we’re doing this, we’re responding to a demand response or demand flexibility event. It’s got minimal impact on the equipment because we’re just changing the temperature by a few degrees.

PAUL SCHUSTER –What’s the business model for a virtual power plant? How does the building owner get value out of signing up to participate in EDO program? And for that matter, how does EDO support all of this effort that you’re putting into something like this?

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Yeah, great question. And there are a wide variety of different business models for virtual power plants. And it really depends on the state and the utility. You’ll have ones like Puget Sound Energy in the Pacific Northwest has a new virtual power plant when they are working with residential and commercial buildings and they’re paying a dollar per kilowatt of load shifted in shed. And that’s a model that we see in New England.

PAUL SCHUSTER –So they’ll actually pay you to shed that load. And I assume you share some of that with the building owner to, you know, have them reduce their temperature or increase their temperature by a degree or two.

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Exactly. And so for those types of virtual power plants, it’s a power plants is a dollars per kilowatt of load shifted in shed. And Edo works on kind of a couple different angles of virtual power plants. So one, we bring buildings into these existing virtual power plants. And then we have that payment, we take some event and some of it goes to the building owner for the load shifting and shedding. And then there’s other programs when we’re working with utilities and partnership with utilities to design the virtual power plants.

And so we’re administering the commercial building virtual power plant. And the utility is getting energy efficiency savings from the program. They’re getting the kind of demand response type load that’s shifting and shedding and they’re building these relationship, but they’re really important customers.

And so, and that program, we’re getting paid as the program administrator and buildings are sometimes getting this solution for free when they’re getting energy efficiency and potentially payments for shifting load.

PAUL SCHUSTER –Interesting. You’re actually working for the utility in those cases.

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Exactly. Yeah.

PAUL SCHUSTER –Are there certain characteristics that you look for in a market to sit there and say, this is a good market for a VPP?

COURTNEY BLODGETT –We are typically looking. So when we’re working with utilities, we’re looking for utilities that have decarbonization goals. So the regulator saying you need to make this transition to clean energy. And they really need a solution so that they don’t have to build more or turn on these existing fossil fuel power plants. And ones that have grid constraints. So they’re seeing these increases in electric load or geographic grid constraints. So you’ll have transformers or substations that are stressed. And they wanted to defer the upgrade of that piece of equipment. And so we can come in and help to reduce load at a substation or transformer level. And we’re going to work with commercial customers on these substations and just have this really targeted demand response type program, a demand flexibility program to shift load.

PAUL SCHUSTER –Is most of your work through the utilities then? Or do you go directly to the building managers and articulate the value proposition to them as well?

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Our long term vision is to work mainly with utilities to have them be our key customer because we believe that utilities, I mean, many of them want to have this deeper understanding of where load is being shifted. And to be able to rely on load that’s being shifted.

And so that’s something that’s pretty unique about Edo solution is we are forecasting come on a real time basis, how much load is available to shift and shed for utility. And that’s not something that they’re used to seeing. They call a demand response event and load is shifted somewhere in their system. They don’t know either before during or after an event where which customers are participating. There are third party vendors that are doing that. They don’t have that insight, but they want to have that control over where load is being shifted.

So in the future will be utility facing right now, we’re working with large scale facility managers and property managers to do some of this energy management work in the building to start with that solution and then to bring these building into existing virtual power plants.

PAUL SCHUSTER –Well, let’s dig into that then, because say, say a building or a property manager, facility manager, an owner of some type wants to participate in a program like this. What are the things that they should be thinking about? And then how do they how do they start to engage in a process around, you know, opening up these value streams around a VPP?

COURTNEY BLODGETT –So we’re typically looking to work with portfolios of buildings and such.

And our team, so we’ve got a team of building engineers who kind of make that connection with the facility managers and property owners so that they understand what our solution offers. And for those customers, the energy and demand charge management is kind of the core of what they’re looking for, participating in virtual power plant is kind of just the cherry on top. But they are wanting to reduce their overall electricity consumption. And we’re seeing more of that as electricity prices continue to increase and they will continue to increase.

And so facility managers and property managers and owners are starting to think, how do we reduce this cost that we’re paying for electricity? How do we extend the lifetime of our equipment? How do we have just a better operating building? And our solution is there to support facility managers. So it’s not just a software solution because facility managers already have enough pieces of software. They’re trying to keep the toilets unclogged and the elevators running. Like they do not want another kind of application that they have to open and get alerts from.

So our building managers are building engineers are there to support facility managers, bring them through this process of how do we identify and implement the energy efficiency measures and build trust so that then they allow us to in an automated way do the shifting and shedding of load through changing the set point during a demand response event.

PAUL SCHUSTER –Well, that was going to be part of my next question is, what sort of hardware and software is required to do something like this? Is this, I imagine there’s a digital backbone that needs to be implemented so you can do some of that automated work. I’m hoping that that’s something that Edo does and isn’t necessarily on the building manager to figure out. But to be honest, I’m not entirely certain.

And for that matter, what sort of technical hardware is required? Do they need to upgrade their HVAC system? And you know, or is it simply a matter of putting in new thermostats? And what is it that they need to invest behind in order to actually recognize the value out of this?

Well, one of the core value prop decisions of our solution is none of that is required. So the only real, well, the only hardware part of this solution is that we go and install a data gateway, which is a mini computer in essence that connects to the local network and allows us to pull data directly from the HVAC equipment.

Or if there’s any DERs, or some energy resources, such as storage or solar, we can pull data from that via different communication protocols. BackNet is a communication protocol that we use to connect to the HVAC equipment.

And so that allows us to pull all that data that I talked about that we map and analyze to identify these energy efficiency measures. And we work with the IT team in advance. There will always be questions, understandably, about installing an external device.

And Edo is certified with what’s called SOC2 type two, which is kind of the cybersecurity gold standard of the utility world. And like, what are the processes and procedures you have in place around cybersecurity?

And so that piece of hardware is really the only change that happens to the building. We don’t require the replacement of the building management system. We don’t have to change any thermostats. We do that optimization piece in the beginning, the energy efficiency, to make sure everything is working properly. But we aren’t requiring the swap out of any functional equipment.

PAUL SCHUSTER –So minimally invasive efforts on the part of the building, they get out of this energy reductions from energy efficiency and management of that. They get some value around demand response programs and VPP programs that are inherent within the power operating system that they’re working within. Is there other value that the building managers get that I’m missing or how they’d be thinking about this?

COURTNEY BLODGETT –I mean, they often get more comfortable tenants because part of that energy efficiency piece is we’re identifying like, what are the temperature bands and humidity bands that are supposed to be set for the building? And if we’re seeing, you know, set points and kind of humidity points that are way outside of that band, we work with the facility manager to make that room more comfortable for the tenants.

And that also then often reduces the amount of stress on the HVAC equipment. And then also we’re starting to see large companies care more and more about kind of carbon emissions and what’s called ESG. And so as part of their plans to reduce the overall greenhouse gas emissions, our solution is a way to help them reduce our energy use in their related greenhouse gas emissions.

PAUL SCHUSTER –The scope two emissions around how they’re actually spending their money around electricity, energy heating, cooling, etc. So those are the benefits to the building. How do you support the utilities on the other side of the equation, if you will?

COURTNEY BLODGETT –So the utilities, I mean, it depends what their priority is.

So particularly in programs, one where our customer is the utility, we work with them to identify their priorities for the program. So it could be that they have equity targets that they want to meet, and they’re trying to figure out how to engage schools.

PAUL SCHUSTER –Social equity targets? Or what do you mean by equity targets?

COURTNEY BLODGETT –So most states will have maps of communities that are considered underserved or disadvantaged. And often these communities don’t have the resources to participate in utility programs. And it’s thought about more in residential, like how do you work with low income customers and give them the value of an energy efficiency program, but also can apply to schools.

I mean, school systems are equally stressed. They don’t have the high property tax coming in to help fund all the capital upgrades. They have a lot of deferred maintenance. So we can work with schools or municipalities that are in these areas that have been identified as a state as disadvantage or underserved communities.

And so we can help to target those communities for the commercial buildings there, for utilities, or they’re looking to bring in a type of commercial customer that never participates in a program, and they’re trying to tap into new resources, or this targeting of substation that isn’t they’re going to be needing to upgrade it in a couple of years. How about if we focus on that substation to help prevent the need to upgrade it in the near future?

And that overall, as well, prevents power outages. Anytime a system is nearing capacity, there will be power outages from that. Particularly during these extreme heat days that we’re seeing more and more of, this equipment can handle less load and we’re seeing more load because everybody’s cranking up their air conditioners. So we will then really target that area to help prevent outages.

PAUL SCHUSTER –So we started the conversation kind of talking about demand response and then how it’s kind of shifted to demand response 2.0 and kind of what a virtual power plant looks like today in terms of a more sophisticated management of load and storage. And now what you’re suggesting is, dare I say demand response 3.0 or maybe we’re so far beyond demand response at this point, to the point where you’re actually working with utilities around some of this flexible load to manage their hard assets better, manage the maintenance of those and manage the technology in a way that gives them a lot more flexibility on their grid operating equipment.

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Yeah, and I wouldn’t say we’re going in and doing like direct management of any of those.

PAUL SCHUSTER –Not yet. Give it time.

COURTNEY BLODGETT –But we are trying to turn the commercial buildings into the equivalent of a grid asset.

And so, you know, all of this is a much more dynamic automated targeted smarter, more reliable way of shifting load and demand response. So that’s why you’ve heard me say a couple of times, demand flexibility or demand response, because demand response was known in the wider industry, but what we’re doing is much more than that.

And we also have this big energy efficiency piece, because we see that as overall permanent load reduction on the grid. And so for us, we have, you know, this shifting and shedding a load and a permanent level and then at a temporary level. And it is just much more dynamic than old school demand response 1.0.

PAUL SCHUSTER –The greenest electron is the one you never have to use in the first place, right?

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Exactly. Exactly.

PAUL SCHUSTER –So, fascinating to see, you know, how these blunt instruments that we grew up with in terms of, hey, you know, we’ve got more electricity coming on, we’re going to go and build another power plant. We’ve got, you know, very unsophisticated ways of thinking about our grid that we’ve gone through demand response. We’ve now gotten into demand flexibility and virtual power plants and what Edo and other organizations and companies are bringing to the table is a much more sophisticated, digitally enabled solution that is taking these big buildings, you know, to your very, very early point that the built environment, you know, is responsible for 40% of our greenhouse gas emissions globally. We’re able to take those and do something with it.

It’s fascinating.

Courtney, what are the three to four key points that you want to make certain the audience takes away from the conversation today around virtual power plants and around Edo in particular in terms of how you’re helping commercial managers, you know, operate within this system?

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Yeah, the first point I would say would be around, we should expect this load shedding and shifting to just become a normalized part of the grid. So, these smart thermostat programs that people are seeing, EV charging or commercial building virtual power plants, it is just what the grid system is going to include.

And in some ways, that is really great because it starts to share the value of grid operations with you and me and the facility managers because we’re getting paid to shift load to act as a virtual power plant. So, some could say it democratizes the grid, you could take that as you.

But I also think, you know, for me who I come from the generation side from the grid side, not from the building side necessarily, and this to me is just such a crucial part of the clean energy transition. If we really are going to shift further and further away from fossil fuels, we need to be able to rely on virtual power plants to replace those peaker plants that you talked about. Like, how do we just really change how we think about what a quote unquote power plant is? Now we are all part of a power plant. And I’m really excited for that transition.

PAUL SCHUSTER –Being smarter about how we consume power, being smarter about how we think about the power grid and evolve into what a clean energy economy is going to look like.

Courtney, thank you for coming on the show today, sharing a little bit about VPPs. If anybody wants to get in touch with you and with Edo, I’ll go ahead and include some links within the show notes. Feel free to look there for Courtney’s contact information as well.

Courtney, thank you very much.

COURTNEY BLODGETT –Paul, thanks so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.

Conclusion:

This conversation sheds light on how Edo is leading the charge in turning commercial buildings into flexible, grid-responsive assets through innovative VPP solutions. By integrating advanced technologies, optimizing energy efficiency, and working closely with utilities, Edo is helping to reshape the energy landscape for a more sustainable, resilient future. Whether it’s reducing load on peak days or supporting decarbonization goals, Edo’s mission is to ensure that buildings become a critical part of the clean energy transition.

You can follow Paul Schuster’s Eight Minutes podcast on Spotify.

You can follow Courtney Blodgett on LinkedIn.