Everyone’s Talking VPPs—No One’s Talking Trust

InnovationEveryone’s Talking VPPs—No One’s Talking TrustByJulian Durand,Forbes Councils Member.for Forbes Technology CouncilCOUNCIL POSTExpertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based)May 11, 2026, 09:30am EDTJulian Durand is GM Intertrust Secure Systems and Chief Security Officer at Intertrust Technologies. gettyThe next phase of the energy transition is already underway.Energy retailers are moving beyond simply supplying electricity to actively orchestrating distributed energy resources—residential batteries, EVs and smart devices—into what are known as virtual power plants (VPPs). These systems promise to transform scattered assets into coordinated, dispatchable infrastructure capable of participating in wholesale markets.A recent example is Rhythm Energy’s push into residential battery aggregation in Texas, leveraging a platform built at scale in Australia and integrating interoperability technologies designed to connect heterogeneous devices.But beneath the surface of this momentum lies a hard truth:VPPs will not scale—not technically, not economically—without a foundational trust layer.​The Illusion Of ConnectivityToday’s VPP architectures are built on a fragile assumption: that connectivity equals control. In reality, most distributed energy assets are managed through inconsistent OEM APIs, connected via brittle cloud-to-cloud integrations and governed by unclear or misaligned economic incentives.Some vendors charge excessive fees, while others provide APIs with little long-term reliability. This creates a systemic risk. If you cannot reliably and securely communicate with an asset, you do not control it—you are merely hoping it behaves.​The Real Bottleneck: Trust, Not TechnologyThe core challenge facing VPPs is not battery technology, AI optimization or market design. It is trust at scale. To function as a true grid resource, a VPP must answer the following in real time: Is t...