Virtual power plant (VPP) platform profile
Camus Energy: grid DERMS and flexible connections
How Camus helps utilities find distribution constraints, manage EV charging on overloaded transformers and connect data centers sooner.
VPP Economics has no affiliation with, sponsorship from, or endorsement by any utility, aggregator, platform, or device maker named here.
The short answer
- Camus builds grid-side software for utilities. Rather than enrolling customers, it shows a utility where its distribution grid is constrained, hour by hour, and which devices or large loads can relieve it (Camus).
- Its newest market is data centers. Camus’s FlexConnect software lets utilities connect data centers 3–5 years sooner with flexible operating limits; sites stay fully grid-powered more than 99% of hours (Camus).
- Its EV work shows local value. With AES Indiana, Camus found that grid-aware managed charging could defer upgrades on 43 feeders and about 5,900 transformers, worth $75 million a year in capital flexibility (Camus).
- Deferred capital is not the same as savings. The same AES study puts net present savings at $7.3 million over 2025–2035, a tenth of the headline.
Where Camus fits
Highlighted boxes are the roles this company plays; the green bar shows where its programs sit from demand response to an orchestrated VPP.
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What Camus does
Camus combines utility grid data, including SCADA, GIS maps, smart-meter data and device telemetry, into one model of the distribution system, then forecasts where and when it will be constrained (Camus). It does not usually control devices itself. Instead it sends two kinds of signals to edge DERMS platforms or aggregators: operating envelopes that cap what devices on a constrained transformer can draw, and dispatch events that reward reductions at system peaks (Camus).
Its utility partners reach about 7 million customers (Camus).
Deferred capital versus net savings
AES Indiana managed charging study, millions of dollars
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EV charging on constrained transformers
Vermont Electric Cooperative, with 34,000 members, estimated that 30–40% of its transformers, lines and substations could become overloaded from electrification, at a traditional upgrade cost of $80–100 million. Camus found 491 home EV chargers in smart-meter data, including some the co-op did not know about, then tested an hourly operating envelope on a member’s ChargePoint charger. The car still charged fully by morning; during a simulated regional peak event, charging dropped to zero and then resumed within the transformer limit (Camus).
This is the local half of grid flexibility: the same device can answer a system peak event and protect its own transformer, if the software knows where it sits.
Flexible connections for data centers
Under a flexible connection, the utility guarantees firm capacity for most of a site’s load and sets conditional limits on the rest, which apply during roughly 1% of hours when the grid is constrained; the site covers those hours with batteries, generators or load shifting (Camus). Camus stresses that this is a planning and approval pathway, not demand response (Camus). About a dozen U.S. utilities, including PG&E, SCE and ComEd, are offering or piloting flexible interconnection (Camus), and Camus is demonstrating FlexConnect to Duke Energy, Edison International and PG&E through a Google for Startups accelerator (Yahoo Finance).
What it means for program design
Know where flexibility is worth most
Constraint maps let a utility pay more for flexibility on overloaded feeders and less elsewhere.
Report savings, not just deferrals
Deferred capital headlines can be ten times net savings. Ask for both.
Expect operating envelopes
Grid-side platforms will increasingly send device-level limits, not just event calls, so aggregator software needs to accept them.
Method and caveats
Figures are company-reported or from utility studies, checked October 15, 2026. AES Indiana figures assume 5% residential EV charger adoption, which AES expected by 2029.