leap and enel team up to scale commercial & industrial virtual power plants

Executive Summary

Leap, a leading virtual power plant platform provider, and Enel North America have announced a strategic partnership to bring substantially more commercial and industrial distributed energy resources into demand-response and grid-services markets. The collaboration launches with three utility programs that Enel currently manages in Washington, Arizona, and the Tennessee Valley, with clear plans to expand across additional U.S. markets in the coming months.

Why This Matters

The rapid growth of data centers, accelerating electrification across multiple sectors, and increasingly frequent extreme weather events are collectively driving sharp peaks in electricity demand, creating urgent pressure on utilities to identify fast, cost-effective sources of grid flexibility. By combining Enel’s position as a top global demand response and VPP provider with Leap’s proven automated software platform, this partnership significantly lowers the participation barrier for commercial and industrial customers—and their technology providers—to engage in grid programs and generate meaningful recurring revenue.

Key Insights

Impressive Scale: Leap currently manages more than 400,000 devices across U.S. energy markets, encompassing battery storage systems, EV chargers, and smart building technologies—providing immediate scale to the partnership.

Substantial Market Presence: Enel operates approximately 12 GW of renewable energy capacity and nearly 5 GW of demand response capacity in North America, giving this partnership immediate scale and valuable access to numerous utility program opportunities.

Revenue Stacking Potential: The alliance holds particular relevance for EV charging operators and commercial building owners seeking to stack demand-response payments, capacity market revenues, and ancillary-service compensation on top of their core business models, improving overall project economics.

Our Perspective

Virtual power plants are decisively moving from experimental pilot status to mainstream grid infrastructure, and this significant partnership underscores that fundamental shift on the commercial and industrial side of the energy market. For EV infrastructure operators and investors, integrating with sophisticated platforms like Leap through established aggregators such as Enel will become an increasingly important pathway to monetizing the inherent flexibility of charging loads—transforming what many operators currently treat as a pure cost center into a meaningful revenue opportunity. As grid conditions become more volatile and utilities seek flexible resources with increasing urgency, the companies that can seamlessly participate in these markets will enjoy both improved economics and stronger competitive positioning.