Opening the VPP Door to Every Household
Virtual power plants have long been touted as the future of distributed energy, but participation has traditionally required homeowners to invest in rooftop solar panels first. SOLRITE Energy is challenging that assumption with a new battery-only program launched on February 11 in Texas that lets residential ratepayers join a virtual power plant without any solar installation whatsoever.
The program, called a Virtual Power Plant Agreement (VPA), deploys home battery storage systems manufactured by sonnen, a subsidiary of Shell, at no upfront cost to the customer. In exchange, participants pay a flat monthly fee of $20 and an electricity rate of 12 cents per kilowatt-hour -- a notable discount compared to the Texas average residential rate of roughly 16 cents per kWh. The company is initially targeting customers in Houston, Corpus Christi, and McAllen, with plans to expand.
How the Economics Work
The financial model is built on a straightforward value exchange. SOLRITE installs and maintains the battery system, then aggregates the stored energy across its network to provide grid services -- dispatching power during peak demand periods when wholesale electricity prices spike. The revenue generated from those grid services subsidizes the discounted electricity rate offered to participants.
Blake Richetta, CEO of sonnen's US operations, described the approach as a validation that "battery value now stands entirely on its own as a grid balancing solution." The pricing, he said, is made possible through grid service revenues rather than relying solely on customer payments. For the Texas grid operator ERCOT, which has struggled with reliability during extreme weather events, thousands of distributed batteries acting in concert could provide meaningful demand response capacity.
Addressing the 'Solar Orphan' Problem
Beyond serving new customers, SOLRITE is also positioning itself as a lifeline for what it calls "solar orphans" -- homeowners who invested in rooftop solar systems but have since lost access to favorable net metering rates or grid compensation programs. As utilities across the country have scaled back incentives for solar exports, many of these homeowners find themselves stuck with payment obligations on their solar equipment while receiving diminishing returns. Adding battery storage through the VPA allows them to store and time-shift their solar generation rather than exporting it at unfavorable rates.
SOLRITE currently serves approximately 3,000 customers through its existing rooftop solar-plus-storage program. The company has set an ambitious target of enrolling 10,000 new customers by the end of 2026, which it says would contribute roughly 600 megawatt-hours of dispatchable, flexible power to the Texas grid.
Why It Matters
The program enters a competitive and rapidly evolving market. Tesla has sold more than one million Powerwall units globally, Lunar Energy is pushing AI-driven home energy systems, and Ford launched a dedicated energy division in January 2026. But SOLRITE's battery-only VPP model addresses a gap that none of those competitors have explicitly targeted: making distributed energy participation accessible to the roughly 97 percent of American households that do not have rooftop solar. If the model proves viable at scale in Texas, it could reshape how utilities, regulators, and consumers think about the building blocks of a distributed grid.
