How Ava and Lunar are launching a new era of home energy programs in California

Ava Community Energy, one of California’s leading community choice energy providers, wanted to unlock the full potential of local clean energy. 

By partnering with Lunar Energy, Ava found a true delivery partner to launch its Virtual Power Plant (VPP). Together, we are connecting home batteries paired with solar systems, and EVs across Ava’s territory—combining cutting-edge software with end-to-end management to reduce emissions and keep rates stable for the whole community.

‍The challenge

Distributed energy resources can only do so much on their own. They need smart software to run them and the right programs to get them out there. Scattered across Ava’s service territory, tens of thousands of customer-owned batteries, solar panels, and EVs historically operated independently.

Building a virtual power plant would support Ava cutting emissions, lowering customer bills, and reducing expensive peak power purchases, but the operational hurdles were steep. Ava needed a partner who could handle complex multi-manufacturer integrations while seamlessly launching and running new residential energy programs on the ground.

The solution

That’s exactly what Lunar delivered. As Ava’s sole VPP provider territory-wide, Lunar’s Gridshare Platform takes the complexity out of managing mixed asset fleets at scale. By connecting devices from multiple manufacturers, our technology transforms distributed energy resources (DERs)  into a single, dispatchable Virtual Power Plant (VPP) that can respond to grid conditions in real time.

The partnership kicked off with the launch of Ava SmartHome Charging. Serving as the underlying VPP platform engine behind the program, Lunar’s DERMS enabled the program to automatically shift EV charging away from expensive carbon-intensive evening peaks and into overnight or daytime solar windows. Ava's team has full program performance visibility on the Gridshare dashboard, including enrollment trackers, EV load-shifting energy and power impact widgets, underperformance alerts, and a document center for program-specific reporting.

Next, the collaboration expanded significantly with the launch of Ava SmartHome Battery. For this $11 million initiative, Lunar’s scope grew far beyond software—we delivered and are managing the core program operations from the ground up.

Ava SmartHome Battery connects resident-owned storage directly into Ava's VPP. Through the program, customers receive upfront installation rebates and ongoing financial incentives in exchange for enabling their batteries to support the grid. The Gridshare Platform monitors grid conditions and automatically triggers dispatches of that stored energy during critical evening peaks, then seamlessly switches back to maximizing savings for the homeowner once grid conditions ease.

Beyond device control, to fully run and manage the program on Ava's behalf, Lunar built and operated the full end-to-end program infrastructure, including:

• End-to-end eligibility and enrollment process: designing custom customer journeys and building a streamlined eligibility and enrollment portal for customers and installers, providing accurate incentive calculations, collecting inputs for payment processing, facilitating terms and conditions signing, and securing onboarding for multiple OEMs to be brought into our ecosystem.
• Incentive processing: managing a turnkey payment distribution with transparent reporting via our partner Tremendous, with a wide range of payment methods available.
• First-line customer support: deploying a comprehensive customer care infrastructure using Dialpad and Intercom, complete with a dedicated knowledge base and ticket escalation system.

What's next

California's energy market is moving fast. As more residents adopt batteries, solar, and EVs, Ava's virtual power plant will grow. But the real expansion lies in how these programs are delivered. 

Beyond scaling the technology, Lunar is proven to handle full-scale program management, from building enrollment processes to managing complex data and resolving operational hurdles. By combining Lunar’s Gridshare Platform with the right strategic partners, we can successfully design, launch, and manage fully customized programs from the ground up, unlocking more flexible load for the grid and greater savings for our partners and their customers.

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