PJM Interconnection, which serves 67 million people across 13 states from the mid-Atlantic to the Midwest, has become a poster child for how not to keep up with soaring energy demand.
Why it matters: Stop sizing batteries for the client's toaster and start sizing them for the grid's instability—or get cut out by 'as-a-service' competitors.
If you think grid instability and 'power-starved' regions are a uniquely American problem, you haven't looked at the Dutch congestion maps or the German redispatch costs lately. Base Power’s play in the PJM territory—installing 'unusually large' batteries—is a direct response to a failing grid. For European installers, this is the blueprint for the next five years of residential sales.
The Death of Sizing for Self-Consumption
For a decade, we’ve taught installers to size batteries based on a client’s overnight load. That logic is dead. When a startup like Base Power deploys oversized units, they aren't doing it so the customer can run a hairdryer during a blackout. They’re doing it because the marginal cost of an extra 5kWh of LFP cells is now negligible compared to the value of that capacity when the grid is screaming for relief.
In markets like the Netherlands, where the Salderingsregeling (Net Metering) phase-out is finally looming, the 'Base Power' model is what saves your margins. Instead of selling a 5kWh unit for €5,000, the future is 15kWh+ units integrated into a Virtual Power Plant (VPP). If you aren’t already talking to aggregators like Next Kraftwerke or leveraging Sonnen’s VPP capabilities, you’re leaving half the asset's lifetime value on the table.
The Logistics Arbitrage
The 'truck roll' is your biggest expense. If your team is already in the driveway in Bavaria or Brabant, installing a 10kWh battery versus a 20kWh battery takes nearly the same amount of labor. With lithium prices hovering near record lows, the hardware is no longer the bottleneck. The play is to turn the home into a frequency response node. Start selling the grid-service potential, not just the 'green feeling' of self-consumption. The PJM chaos proves that when the grid fails, the installer with the biggest installed capacity in the neighborhood becomes the de facto utility.