Volts The case for using prices rather than VPPs to coordinate distributed energy
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May 8, 2026 
Bruce Nordman, veteran research scientist on building energy and networked systems, advocates dynamic, time- and location-specific retail pricing to coordinate distributed energy. He explains why price signals can replace aggregators, how devices optimize locally to hourly to five-minute prices, and how price plus capacity envelopes preserve customer value, privacy, and grid safety.
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Price Cascade From Grid To Device
- Price signals cascade from grid price to microgrid local price to nanogrid/device-level prices, letting each level add local adjustments.
- This lets devices factor in import/export state, GHG preferences, deadlines, and other hyper-local values.
Customers Keep Flexibility Value
- Pricing lets each customer optimize for their own preferences and keep all flexibility value, unlike VPPs which aggregate and capture value.
- Nordman emphasizes customers can still hire third parties to help, but control and value remain with the customer.
Reserve VPPs For Emergencies Only
- Use VPPs only for services prices can't deliver, like immediate emergency load-shedding on seconds timescales.
- For routine balancing and flexibility, prioritize price-based automated response to avoid third-party control.