At a glance
"As a co-op, our job is to provide safe, affordable, and reliable energy to our members. We have a lot of different systems, and the data is spread out. Texture helps us make that data visible all in one place so we're maximizing our time and resources, and not chasing down information."
— Peter Rossi, COO, Vermont Electric Cooperative
With a growing number of EVs, solar, and batteries coming onto Vermont's grid, flexible-load programs have become attractive ways for cooperatives to reduce transmission and capacity costs and pass savings back to their members.
In fact, these programs are so popular in the state that not having one is risky. "If we didn't have a program and others did, during peak windows a larger share of costs could shift onto our members," explains Peter Rossi, COO of Vermont Electric Cooperative (VEC).
Vermont Electric Cooperative partnered with Texture to orchestrate residential battery dispatch through a centralized platform. Texture handled OEM integrations, fleet visibility, dispatch coordination, and enrollment operations, allowing VEC to scale the program without building a dedicated DER software and operations stack in-house.
Impact highlights:
- Over $400,000 in transmission and capacity cost savings returned to members since 2021
- ~200 enrolled residential batteries with 12 OEMs available to members
- Maintained program economics despite increasingly unpredictable peak behavior
Orchestrating a BYO Battery program with Texture
VEC was interested in a bring-your-own-battery (BYOB) model where they would share 50% of the program's value with participating members. But running a residential battery program meant much more than simply enrolling devices.
To take on this work internally, VEC would need to coordinate dispatches in real time, maintain visibility into battery behavior, and manage a growing fleet of customer-owned devices over the long term.
And to offer customers a choice of multiple battery ecosystems, they'd need to negotiate and maintain direct relationships with multiple OEMs, build custom integrations, and manage the ongoing operational overhead of dispatching and monitoring devices across different systems.
"Before Texture, we had many conversations about, 'Is this worth our time? Is this worth our money?'"
— Peter Rossi, COO
VEC began looking for a technology partner that could support a multi-OEM battery program and reduce the integration and operational burden on their internal team. They needed a platform capable of:
- Providing a uniform dispatch methodology across OEMs, with one single platform to dispatch
- Maintaining real-time visibility into fleet behavior
- Supporting smooth member enrollments
- Operating across multiple battery ecosystems, without requiring VEC to manage individual OEM relationships directly
- Eventually being used by Control Center operators to dispatch in near real time
- Member enrollment forms and a seamless enrollment funnel, ideally white-labeled
After evaluating several vendors, VEC chose Texture to power the residential battery program.
"We couldn't find another vendor who would provide us with a multi-OEM platform at the scale we were looking for," Rossi says. "There were options out there that had maybe half of the OEMs we were looking for, but the cost would have made the program not worth running because they charged for each integration."
Texture, which supports 12 different battery manufacturers out of the box, made it viable for VEC to support a multi-OEM program and run it efficiently. Texture maintained OEM integrations across battery ecosystems, normalized device telemetry and control into a unified operational model, and gave VEC real-time visibility into fleet behavior during dispatch events.
OEM integrations, handled
Texture has helped VEC optimize their settings with OEMs to ensure they are getting the max capacity available when dispatching batteries.
As one example, Tesla Powerwall battery settings allow users to set backup reserves. VEC needed to temporarily override this setting (while still preserving a strict 20% backup floor for members) in order to have enough batteries available during dispatch.
"We're small, and program staff wear many hats — they don't really have time to focus on these kinds of manufacturer-specific behaviors," Rossi explains. "Texture has relationships with OEMs where they understand the integrations deeply and can help us get the right configurations in place."
Adapting to a changing grid
As more utilities across Vermont deployed battery dispatch programs, peak demand behavior itself began to change. VEC began seeing unpredictable peaks that spread across 10-12 hour windows, making precise dispatch timing much harder.
That evolution forced the cooperative to rethink parts of the residential battery program. VEC extended dispatch windows from two hours to four, recalibrated incentives for new program participants, and placed greater emphasis on maintaining a consistent dispatch shape across longer events.
As peaks become more challenging, VEC is moving its battery dispatch to the Control Center to dispatch batteries in near real time. Texture has become the platform that supports this work — giving operators a real-time tool that centralizes information and actions, without the cost of switching between multiple platforms.
"With Texture, we have gotten to a point where one analyst can run the program alongside a full procurement workload."
— Peter Rossi, COO
Turning residential batteries into grid infrastructure
Since 2021, VEC has saved over $400,000 in transmission cost savings to its 33,000 members, even as Vermont's peak-demand environment became increasingly hard to predict.
With Texture, VEC built an enrollment and dispatch operation lean enough to run alongside the cooperative's existing procurement workload, rather than requiring a large dedicated DER operations team. And VEC believes the value of the battery fleet may still expand over time.
"With Texture's platform powering our battery program, we're harvesting peak shaving for transmission and capacity costs. And with the way energy markets are going broadly, I think other value streams may emerge over time that we could utilize these batteries for."
— Peter Rossi, COO
