If you own a home battery in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, or Connecticut and you haven’t enrolled it in ConnectedSolutions, you’re leaving about a thousand dollars a year sitting in your garage.
Here’s the number. Massachusetts paid more than $5.4 million to 5,251 residential battery owners for the 2025 season, according to preliminary program administrator data filed with the state’s Energy Efficiency Advisory Council and reported by pv magazine on July 27. Divide it out. Roughly $1,028 per household, for one summer.
ConnectedSolutions is a virtual power plant. Translation: rather than fire up an expensive standby power plant on the worst afternoon in August, your utility borrows a little electricity from thousands of home batteries at once. Mass Save lists the residential battery rate at $275 per average kW of summer event contribution, which pv magazine puts at roughly $1,375 to $2,750 for a residential participant. National Grid tells its Massachusetts customers the average battery enrollment earns about $1,500 a year.
Here’s the catch, and it’s a real one. You’re handing your utility a key. Between June and September it can draw on your battery up to 60 times, usually with at least 24 hours of notice and a limited number of opt-outs. Paired with panels that refill it every day, you’ll barely register it. If it’s a standalone battery you actually lean on when the power goes out, read the opt-out terms twice before you sign.
Why this matters more this year than last: the 30% federal credit that used to cover home batteries is gone. That credit was doing most of the work in the payback math. What’s left is the utility check, and the utility check isn’t small. At about $1,028 a season, ten summers runs past $10,000 against a battery that costs five figures. Real money.
The program needs you. Residential batteries delivered about 28.9 MW of summer capacity in Massachusetts during the 2025 season. The administrators’ 2025-2027 plan targets 93 MW from residential. Translation: they want more than three times as many enrolled batteries as they currently have. When a program is chasing volume, that’s the moment to ask questions instead of signing whatever’s put in front of you.
Call your utility this week. Eversource, National Grid, Rhode Island Energy, and Cape Light Compact all run it. Ask three things: whether your specific battery model qualifies, the per-kW rate you’d be paid, and how many events you can opt out of without losing the incentive. Get those answers in writing before the season, not after. If you’re still deciding whether storage pencils out at all, run it through our solar savings calculator first, and our solar guides cover what else moves the number.
File one thing away if you drive electric. Massachusetts is extending the same idea to cars, adding residential vehicle-to-grid connections that pay drivers roughly the way home batteries already get paid. The spokesperson named the Ford F-150 Lightning, Nissan Leaf, Kia EV9, Polestar 3, and Volvo EX90 as first in line. Details are thin so far. If you own one, watch for the enrollment window.
The panels on your roof sell power back at whatever rate your state allows. The box in your garage gets paid for showing up on the one afternoon the grid is sweating.
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