Load growth isn't going anywhere—and the pressure is on to find flexible capacity at scale. Customer load management programs are becoming an increasingly important lever, but there's a persistent problem: despite 80% of customers expressing interest in energy-saving solutions, enrollment in traditional customer programs has hovered around 10% for decades. Even best-in-class opt-in enrollment––where we're making real strides—can't close the gap alone with too many hurdles around enrollment and participation to solve for. The reality is that voluntary, opt-in programs are no longer sufficient to scale demand flexibility to meet most utilities' megawatt (MW) goals.

After 15 years of stagnant demand flexibility capacity, the industry is pivoting. Built-in Flexibility embeds flexibility directly into the customer experience—as a default feature or at the point-of-sale—with no enrollment required, leaving no home left behind! The results speak for themselves: at Uplight, we've seen participation rates climb from 10% to 70–100% when this approach is applied. The key is keeping customers in control while removing the friction of active enrollment.

Built-in Flexibility, or a no home behind approach, encompasses all mass-market, opt-out participation models that tap into latent customer technology, including:

Behavioral Demand Response (BDR) is a natural first step—and the widest net a utility can cast. It requires no hardware, making it an equitable, low-risk entry point for renters and non-device owners alike. As one client put it, BDR is "all carrot and no stick": there's upside for customers who participate and no penalty for those who don't.

OEM-Based Programs unlock dispatchable capacity that's already sitting idle. Only 1 in 10 households are enrolled in demand response programs. Yet, smart thermostats have the highest residential home penetration at 16-17% of any distributed energy resource. Now, through new OEM offerings, utilities can access that capacity during times of grid constraints, since enrollments will happen by default when a device is installed out of the box.

Programs like ecobee's Grid Resiliency and Renew Home's Energy Shift Capacity are leading examples. These programs produce smaller, more moderate, imperceptible shifts than traditional demand response, but they deliver consistent capacity across more hours of the season.

With rising costs, energy affordability is top of mind for utilities and customers alike. Built-in Flexibility programs ease that pressure—contributing to lower customer bills. Every eligible home added expands the pool of dispatchable MW. And as load flexibility grows, utilities can defer or avoid new generation altogether, curbing the need for rate hikes. That same enrolled base becomes a launch point for other demand-side programs such as automated demand response, time-varying rates, and energy efficiency—compounding flexibility with every enrollment.

One Midwestern utility established an opt-out program that scaled capacity 4–5x faster than traditional enrollment mechanisms. They dispatched the households in the program, delivering the flexibility during times of critical need and discovered an average of 70-80% participation when structured as opt-out versus an opt-in program!

As with any program, exceptional customer experiences can be seen in performance and customer satisfaction.

To get it right, utilities should:

Communicate customer choice, convenience, and control
Clear and early transparency around participation options builds trust, ensuring customers feel empowered rather than constrained by default enrollment.

Make enrollment, participation, and communication preferences easy
Streamlining the customer experience with intuitive self-service tools minimizes friction, which leads to higher enrollment and retention.

Help customers understand the benefits—to them, their community, and the grid
Connecting participation to tangible outcomes—such as household cost savings and grid resilience—can motivate participation.

Build an obvious upgrade path that moves customers into higher-value programs—and higher rewards
These entry-level programs can serve as an entry point into higher-value automated DR or managed EV charging, increasing awareness of other programs and underscoring the ease of participation and opt-out. These programs also usually include incentives that help put dollars back into customer’s pockets.

Develop a dispatch strategy that layers BDR with device-based programs
Carefully sync event timing by cross-referencing enrollment; this prevents conflicting signals and ensures incentives are accurately attributed to the correct program.

Leverage an orchestration layer to strategically view, forecast, dispatch, and evaluate this diverse set of assets
A unified management layer is critical to overcome silos, allowing utilities to visualize the entire portfolio and optimize dispatch across both behavioral and OEM-based assets.

Built-in Flexibility doesn't just deliver immediate capacity—it builds awareness and creates natural pathways into higher-value demand-side programs such as demand response and time-varying rates. At one Northwestern utility, 19% of BDR customers have moved into other demand-side programs, including thermostat, battery, and EV offerings. Among customers who leave one OEM-based program, 40% do so to opt into automated DR.

The load growth challenge is real, but mass participation doesn't have to be complicated. BDR is a foundational tool that can engage every customer—and as OEM offerings continue to expand, utilities that integrate these native capabilities will be best positioned to close the participation gap and secure long-term grid reliability.