Eversource Offers $275/kW to Batteries as ISO New England Braces for Peak Load
The utility's new demand response pilots land days before ISO New England forecasts its highest daily net load this decade.
ISO New England is forecasting 478,450 megawatt-hours of net load for Thursday, July 2 (2026-07-02) — among the highest daily readings the grid operator has logged this decade. Into that window, Eversource launched two targeted demand response pilots for commercial customers in eastern Massachusetts, paying up to $275 per kilowatt for battery curtailment during summer stress events.4
New England's summer reliability picture has grown more complicated as baseload retirements outpace new dispatchable additions, and the region has limited import capacity from neighbouring markets. Utilities across the country are turning to demand-side resources to meet peak capacity needs before new generation is built, with consumers becoming active grid participants rather than passive load, Power Magazine reported in June.4,2
Eversource said on June 25 it was expanding its ConnectedSolutions program with two pilots: one in Greater Boston targeting commercial customers with stationary batteries, electric vehicles, and smart thermostats; a second in southeastern Massachusetts structured around solar integration as well as peak curtailment. Businesses in the southeastern pilot can earn $275/kW between June and September (2026), falling to $100/kW during the shoulder months of April, May, October, and November, with events callable as many as 150 times per year.4
The average incentive across both pilots is $250/kW for battery curtailment, Eversource said. Smart thermostat participants earn less — $50 to $150 upfront plus $200 annually — reflecting the lower and less controllable curtailment value of temperature-managed loads relative to battery storage.4
A companion "Managed Charging+" pilot adds another layer. Southeastern Massachusetts customers can charge electric vehicles during midday periods when solar output exceeds demand, absorbing excess generation that would otherwise weigh on prices while simultaneously reducing draw during afternoon and evening peaks.4
The incentive levels are high enough to repay aggregation costs quickly. At $250/kW average performance payments across a summer season, a commercial customer with 100 kilowatts of dispatchable battery capacity could earn $25,000 in curtailment incentives before accounting for the upfront equipment payments. Eversource has not disclosed the target aggregate capacity across both pilots, which makes it difficult to assess the grid impact if dispatch events are called coinciding with the July 2 (2026-07-02) high-load day.4
The scale question is sharpened by the state of the battery market more broadly. Developers have been rushing to bring more battery projects online, but high battery pack prices, global shipping bottlenecks and supply chain constraints have dampened near-term deployments, panelists at the BloombergNEF Summit said in April. The commercial storage population Eversource is recruiting for ConnectedSolutions may be smaller than the incentive levels suggest.1
The Eversource approach sits within a larger industry push to aggregate distributed assets as a reliability tool. Tesla, Sunrun, and Renew Home announced a partnership in June aimed at building a virtual power plant of up to 16 gigawatts nationally, combining rooftop solar, home batteries, and grid-responsive thermostats into a single dispatchable resource. The New England commercial pilots are narrower, but they test the same core dispatch assumption: that batteries and managed loads perform when called on during the hours when wholesale prices and reliability pressures peak simultaneously.3
The pilots run through summer 2026, giving Eversource and ISO New England a first real-data look at curtailment reliability in a population of commercial customers with on-site storage. How many events get called, and how accurately batteries discharge during those windows, will determine whether the ConnectedSolutions model can be scaled into a meaningful grid resource — or whether it remains a supplementary tool at the margins of New England's summer reliability picture.4