FranklinWH to bring residential battery VPP pilots to European markets

California-headquartered FranklinWH Energy Storage Inc. is well established in the United States as a home energy management services provider. Now, it is preparing to enter Europe in 2027, and where better to test the waters than at Intersolar in Munich?

Vincent Ambrose, Chief Commercial Officer of FranklinWH, spoke to ESS News during the busy trade show and explained that the company is in the process of tailoring its residential battery products for the European market.

Ambrose confirmed that the next generation of its 20 kW/15 kWh aPowerS battery with the company’s integrated EMS ‘aGate’ technology will come in a version just for the European market.

The battery is based on prismatic cells (rectangular instead of cylindrical or pouch-shaped). “We pioneered lithium iron phosphate in the United States market,” said Ambrose, adding that they knew back in 2022 this would be the “sweet spot of the market when it comes to cell production. At the time, LFP was relatively new, and it brought with it all these benefits of not having thermal runaway issues, the right longevity, and good cycle life. So, we incorporated that into our product quite early.”

“The product we launch in Europe next year will most likely quickly follow in Australia and the US. It’s got some pretty cool features for installers, and we’ve been working on it for some time now with European specs,” he added, explaining that the launch would most likely coincide with the company’s formal entry into Europe in 2027.

“In Europe, the distributor plays an even more active role with the installers than they do in the US. You have more, but smaller installers. Our model in the US has been to work through our distributors and we’re carrying those relationships over to Europe, the same partners in many cases,” the CCO said.

He explained that the company used a similar approach when entering the US market. European homes typically don’t need high power requirements compared to homes in California and Texas which run large air conditioning units during summer heatwaves. Therefore, the European battery product will vary slightly.

Residential VPPs

Alongside players like Sunrun, Tesla, and Renew Home, FranklinWH is one of the first movers in residential virtual power plant (VPP) programs in the United States. It is working with several utilities including the Salt River Project in Arizona, National Grid in New York, and Ann Arbor Sustainable Energy Utility in Michigan.

“We’re in more than 19 VPP programs in the US,” said Ambrose. “A lot of these are run by utilities and they’re still in their pilot stage.”

In August 2025, a pilot run by Sunrun and Tesla as aggregators in the state of California found that more than 100,000 home batteries delivered an average of 535 MW of power from 7 to 9 p.m. on July 29, 2025.

 “In the US, residential storage hasn’t been accepted as part of the grid infrastructure yet,” said Ambrose, adding that utilities are still testing whether VPPs can help enhance the grid and offset generation.

VPPs turn people’s homes into a dynamic grid asset but it’s still early days, as Ambrose said. The company plans to bring its VPP learnings to the European market, too. “Some of the European markets are behind the curve on VPPs,” said Ambrose; “Others like the UK, where you have this dynamic 15-minute pricing intervals, are in front of the curve.”

He said the team is already starting to work with European utilities to set up local VPP programs, but he could not give more details about who the partners are.

Besides the UK market, Ambrose highlighted the German and Dutch markets as promising – particularly as the Netherlands continues its net metering phaseout. “The Netherlands market is a lot like Florida. You have a lot of solar and not a lot of storage because you have a very robust net metering program, and as that’s going away in the Netherlands storage becomes a natural extension.”

“I think our flexibility is a strategic asset for us. We’re very proud of what we’ve established in the US where we have an amazing installer base.”

Ambrose said that in the coming months FranklinWH will announce several big partnerships with data center operators and utilities in the United States who will use the company’s residential batteries in a big bloc configuration to provide onsite, uninterruptible power to their operations.