San Francisco, CA, April 16, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Grid Rails today announced the official launch of its enterprise-grade Virtual Power Plant (VPP) platform, a comprehensive software solution designed to help utilities, energy suppliers, and distributed energy resource (DER) operators better understand, control, and monetize energy assets at scale.
As global energy systems rapidly evolve with the rise of electric vehicles, distributed generation, and smart home technologies, Grid Rails addresses a critical gap in how energy assets are coordinated, incentivized, and financially settled. The platform enables real-time visibility, programmable control, and instant settlement across a wide range of connected devices, bringing a new level of efficiency, participation, and responsiveness to modern grid operations.
Despite the rapid growth of distributed energy resources, adoption of Virtual Power Plant programs remains limited. Today, only an estimated 20% of eligible devices in the U.S. are enrolled in VPPs, highlighting a significant gap between available capacity and active participation. Grid Rails aims to close this gap by delivering a simplified, scalable, and more effective approach to device enrollment, management, and incentives.
“Energy infrastructure is becoming increasingly decentralized, but the tools to manage, incentivize, and financially coordinate that complexity haven’t kept pace,” said Michael Grasso, CEO at Grid Rails. “Grid Rails bridges that gap, giving operators the ability to see, control, and natively settle energy activity in real time, while creating dynamic incentive structures that drive meaningful participation from end users. By leveraging Web3 architecture and tokenized metering data, Grid Rails is the only platform capable of delivering awareness, control, and settlement as a fully integrated, native solution.”
- Grid Rails is purpose-built for commercial-scale deployment, enabling seamless integration across the modern energy ecosystem. The platform is designed to work with utilities and grid operators, retail energy providers, cooperatives, and municipal energy companies, as well as DER hardware manufacturers. It also supports third-party aggregators and market participants, providing the infrastructure needed to coordinate and manage energy assets at scale
The platform empowers these stakeholders to engage consumers, aggregate distributed capacity, and manage device-level behavior across diverse energy networks.
Three Core Capabilities Powering the Platform
Grid Rails delivers a full-stack VPP solution centered on three core applications:
- Awareness:Operators gain real-time and historical visibility into energy assets across their service area, including telemetry, utilization patterns, and device status enabling smarter forecasting and operational planning.
- Control: The platform enables programmatic and event-driven control of connected devices, allowing operators to adjust energy consumption by volume, timing, and duration, supporting demand response, load balancing, and grid optimization.
- Settlement:Grid Rails introduces real-time financial coordination through automated incentives and payments. Operators can deploy “micro-incentives” to influence behavior, manage thresholds at the device level, and streamline program administration through integrated CRM tools and customer-facing mobile experiences.
The Grid Rails platform natively supports a wide range of off-the-shelf energy devices, including electric vehicles, home chargers, HVAC systems, solar inverters, home batteries, and smart meter data. Through partner APIs, the platform also integrates custom inputs, allowing for flexible deployment across diverse energy environments.
With the launch of Grid Rails, energy providers can move beyond static, delayed systems toward a dynamic, real-time model where energy and value flow together. By combining operational intelligence with financial incentives, the platform unlocks new revenue streams, improves grid resilience, and accelerates participation in next-generation energy programs.
About Grid Rails
Grid Rails is an enterprise software platform powering the next generation of Virtual Power Plants. Designed for utilities, energy providers, and distributed energy operators, Grid Rails enables real-time awareness, control, and settlement of energy assets across decentralized networks. The platform helps organizations optimize grid performance, unlock new revenue opportunities, and drive deeper consumer participation in modern energy markets.
amal@lunapr.io
