>They've already closed down 2 peaker power plants because of this, so it doesn't seem to just be about handling power outages, but also handling fluctuating power usage instead of firing up extra power plants.

Yes, that was a significant early argument I remember around the public benefits. The daily power spikes have always been a major challenge particularly when you don't have much commercial/industrial base. And even in the earliest period of the original 2000 home pilot they were surprised and pretty happy about how much load could be spread and the resulting savings. Note though that regulators were cautious and there was controversy around how well it'd actually work, you can find articles like this 2019 VT Digger one [0] from the era. Fortunately it did indeed work out, but easy to forget it was all pretty new at one point.

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0: https://vtdigger.org/2019/09/05/state-calls-for-investigatio...