Take a mid-sized plant in the PJM Interconnection region running chillers, compressors and a couple of ovens. Most days nobody thinks of that equipment as an asset. When the grid is tight, it can be.
That is the case behind PJM demand response for manufacturers, and it got stronger this week. Google expanded its virtual power plant (VPP) deal with Voltus to more than 1 gigawatt (GW), Utility Dive reported on 22 October 2026, and the mix includes industrial process adjustments alongside batteries and on-site generation.
The grid is paying for flexibility because it is short of capacity
PJM’s latest capacity auction, covering June 2028 to May 2029, cleared at its price cap, and the reserve margin came in well below target. Demand response (DR) cleared less capacity than the year before, while data centers keep adding load faster than new supply arrives.
Payments have followed. PJM’s market monitor reported that DR revenue more than tripled in 2025, as cited by Utility Dive.
A megawatt of curtailable load is worth six figures a year, before deductions
At the capped auction price of $325 per megawatt-day, one megawatt (MW) of accredited capacity is worth roughly $119,000 a year. A plant keeps less than that. Aggregators take a share, PJM’s accreditation discounts the load, and missed events bring penalties. Even so, a site with a megawatt or two of genuinely flexible load is looking at a real budget line, not a rounding error.
Most plants have less flexible load than they think, and some have more
The usual candidates are chilled water, compressed air, process heat backed by thermal storage, and batch operations that can shift by an hour. Continuous processes, cleanrooms and anything with tight product tolerances usually are not. The surprises tend to sit in between: a cold store that can coast, a wastewater step that can wait.
Finding them takes an engineer on the floor, not a spreadsheet. An American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Level II energy audit walks each system, records its load profile and ramp limits, and asks operations what they will actually tolerate.
The payment depends on proving the load really dropped
When an event is called, the plant has to show its demand fell against a credible baseline. This is where revenue quietly leaks: a baseline built on an unusual week, a meter covering the wrong loads, a line restarted early.
Measurement and verification (M&V) to the International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP) gives that proof a defensible method, with submetering on the loads being shed and a record of every event. Climeaction builds this into its implementation work.
Start with the plant, not the contract
Aggregators are quick to sign a plant up. The better order is to understand the site first: what can be shed, for how long, at what cost to production, and how it can be measured.
That work also tends to surface permanent savings that cut the plant’s own peak demand charges, which pay back every month rather than only when the grid calls. Our manufacturing team can help you work through it, or get in touch.
Capacity scarcity in PJM has made curtailable plant load valuable. The sites most likely to benefit are those that know what they can shed and can show it happened.
