DER Grid Services Manager CPower Energy Acquired by NRG as part of $12B M&A

May 12, 2025

The deal announced this weekend includes 18 natural gas-fired power plants owned by LS Power across nine states. In addition, CPower manages about 6 GW in DER assets.

Rod Walton, Microgrid Knowledge Managing Editor

68225129724a22827fceba65 Shutterstock Ma

Virtual power plant (VPP), microgrid and distributed energy management provider CPower Energy is being acquired by independent power producer NRG Energy as part of an estimated $12 billion buy for numerous gas-fired generation and DER platforms which have belonged to CPower’s parent company LS Power.

The deal announced this weekend includes 18 natural gas-fired power plants owned by LS Power across nine states. The generation capacity for those gas turbine facilities is close to 13 GW and doubles NRG Energy’s total generation portfolio, according to reports.

Much of NRG’s customer load is in Texas, and this acquisition includes power plants in the Lone Star State. Meanwhile, NRG is also getting the commercial and industrial VPP platform developed by CPower and which is deployed in all of the nation’s deregulated energy markets.

More on Texas and VPPs

“This transaction is a significant milestone for our firm and investors,” said Paul Segal, CEO of LS Power, in a statement. “In the capable hands of the NRG team, these projects, along with CPower, will continue to provide critical services to the grid, enhancing both its resilience and affordability. As we have since our founding in 1990, LS Power will continue to invest in and develop secure and reliable energy infrastructure across the U.S.”

The DER management technology deployed by CPower connects and aggregates on-site power and other connected assets to increase grid services and other value opportunities for owners of microgrids.

Virtual power plant programs essentially use advanced software and communication technologies to manage, optimize and coordinate the output of DERs, like variable loads, rooftop solar and energy storage systems, electric vehicles, smart thermostats, and smart home devices, such as appliances, televisions and smart lights. So VPPs combine elements of decarbonization such as renewables, digitalization and energy efficiency.

Those DERs in the tens or hundreds of thousands are aggregated into a single, dispatchable resource moved along the main distribution grid to either reduce load or create supply during times of peak demand.

CPower’s Chief Strategy Officer Mathew Sachs was the key source in a recent Microgrid Knowledge story on the value proposition of VPPs for microgrid owners. As grid resource adequacy is hard-pressed with GWs of new loads such as data centers coming online, Sachs pointed out, grid services such as VPP and demand resource both help utilities and increase the revenue opportunity for DER asset owners and operators.

“There is now inherent flexibility in everything” energy-wise, he said in the Microgrid Knowledge story. “Anything that stores, generates or consumes energy is connected to the distribution grid, and that can respond to the grid (when needed). If it’s a refrigerator (with a smart plug) it becomes a DER. . . It’s really not magic.”

Real Promise of Virtual Power: CPower

Rod Walton, Microgrid Knowledge Managing Editor | Managing Editor

For Microgrid Knowledge editorial inquiries, please contact Managing Editor Rod Walton at [email protected].

I’ve spent the last 15 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist. I was an energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World before moving to business-to-business media at PennWell Publishing, which later became Clarion Events, where I covered the electric power industry. I joined Endeavor Business Media in November 2021 to help launch EnergyTech, one of the company’s newest media brands. I joined Microgrid Knowledge in July 2023.

I earned my Bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Oklahoma. My career stops include the Moore American, Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise, Wagoner Tribune and Tulsa World, all in Oklahoma . I have been married to Laura for the past 33-plus years and we have four children and one adorable granddaughter. We want the energy transition to make their lives better in the future.

Microgrid Knowledge and EnergyTech are focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids. The C&I sectors together account for close to 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.