SAN FRANCISCO & ANDOVER, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 16, 2025--
Leap, a leading platform for building and scaling virtual power plants (VPPs), and Enel North America, a clean energy leader in the US and Canada, today announced a new partnership to connect more commercial and industrial (C&I) distributed energy resources (DERs) to utility demand response programs nationwide. Together, Enel and Leap will leverage C&I capacity already installed on the grid to help balance energy demand in real time in Enel’s extensive utility network while adding valuable revenue for Leap’s C&I partner base.
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The collaboration will begin with three utility programs Enel manages in Washington, Arizona, and the Tennessee Valley and will expand over time to additional markets across the country.
Enel, the world leader in demand response and one of the largest VPP aggregators in North America, also serves as an exclusive partner to utilities across the United States to develop and manage demand response programs. Partnering with Leap enables Enel to quickly enroll more capacity into the demand response programs it administers, while providing C&I customers with new opportunities to earn revenue for supporting grid reliability.
For Leap, the partnership marks a wider expansion into vertically integrated utility markets, extending the reach of its automated platform and offering its technology partners additional revenue opportunities for the C&I resources they sell and manage.
“At a time of surging energy demand from data centers, electrification, and extreme weather events, it’s essential that we tap into the flexible capacity already available on the grid to maintain resiliency and keep energy costs down,” said Jason Michaels, CEO of Leap. “Working with Enel, one of the global leaders of the energy transition, allows our partners to access new markets through Leap’s automated platform, enabling more commercial customers to get rewarded for providing fast, cost-effective support to the grid.”
About Leap
Leap is the leading platform for building and scaling virtual power plants (VPPs). Through its software-only solution, Leap facilitates fast, easy and automated access to demand response and other grid services revenue streams for the providers of battery storage systems, EV chargers, smart building technologies, and other distributed energy resources (DERs). Managing over 400,000 energy sites and devices across U.S. energy markets, Leap empowers more than 100 technology partners and their customers to unlock new value and help create a more flexible, resilient grid powered by renewable resources. Visit leap.energy to learn more.
About Enel North America
Enel North America, part of the Enel Group, is a proven renewables leader delivering clean, flexible and sustainable energy solutions. The company develops, builds, owns and operates renewable power plants and demand response solutions, with 12 gigawatts (GW) of installed wind, solar and energy storage capacity and nearly 5 GW of demand response capacity in the US and Canada. Enel is a top-five industry leader for clean power capacity in the US, demand response in North America and utility-scale battery storage in Texas. Learn more at enelnorthamerica.com and on LinkedIn and YouTube.
Leap and Enel announce new partnership.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran fired more missiles at Israel and Gulf Arab states Thursday, demonstrating Tehran’s continued ability to strike its neighbors even as U.S. President Donald Trump claimed the threat from the country was nearly eliminated.
Iran’s attacks on Gulf states along with its chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz have disrupted the world’s energy supplies with effects far beyond the Middle East. That has proved to be Iran’s greatest strategic advantage in the war. Britain planned to hold a call with nearly three dozen countries about how to reopen the strait once the fighting is over.
Trump has insisted the strait can be taken by force — but said it is not up to the U.S. to do that. In an address to the American people Wednesday night, he encouraged countries that depend on oil from Hormuz to “build some delayed courage” and go “take it.”
Before the U.S. and Israel started the war on Feb. 28 with strikes on Iran, the waterway was open to traffic and 20% of all traded oil used passed through it.
Iran responded defiantly to Trump’s speech, in which the American president claimed U.S. military action had been so decisive that “one of the most powerful countries” is “really no longer a threat.”
A spokesman for Iran’s military, Lt. Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, insisted Thursday that Tehran maintains hidden stockpiles of arms, munitions and production facilities. He said facilities targeted so far by U.S. strikes are “insignificant.”
Just before Trump began his address — in which he said U.S. “core strategic objectives are nearing completion” — explosions were heard in Dubai as air defenses worked to intercept an Iranian missile barrage.
Less than a half-hour after the president was done, Israel said its military was also working to intercept incoming missiles. Sirens sounded in Bahrain, home to the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, immediately after the speech.
Attacks continued across Iran on Thursday, with strikes reported in multiple cities.
In Lebanon — home to Iran-backed Hezbollah militants who are fighting Israel, which has launched a ground invasion — an Israeli strike killed four people in the south, the Health Ministry said.
More than 1,900 people have been killed in Iran during the war, while 19 have been reported dead in Israel. More than two dozen people have died in Gulf states and the occupied West Bank, while 13 U.S. service members have been killed.
More than 1,200 people have been killed and more than 1 million displaced in Lebanon. Ten Israeli soldiers have also died there.
Iranian attacks on about two dozen commercial ships, and the threat of more, have halted nearly all traffic in the waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the open ocean.
Since March 1, traffic through the strait has dropped 94% over the same period last year, according to the Lloyds List Intelligence shipping data firm. Two ships are confirmed to have paid a fee, the firm said, while others were allowed through based on agreements with their home governments.
In order to bypass Hormuz, Saudi Arabia has been piping more oil to a Red Sea port, and Iraq said Thursday that it had started to truck oil across Syria to the Mediterranean.
The 35 countries speaking Thursday, including all G7 industrialized democracies except the U.S., as well as the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, signed a declaration last month demanding Iran stop blocking the strait.
Thursday’s talks were focused on political and diplomatic measures, but British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said military planners from an unspecified number of countries will also plot ways to ensure security once fighting ends, including potential mine-clearing work and “reassurance” for commercial shipping.
No country appears willing to try to open the strait by force while the war is raging. French President Emmanuel Macron, while on a visit to South Korea, called a military operation to secure the waterway “unrealistic.”
But there is a concern that Iran might limit traffic through the waterway even after U.S. and Israeli attacks on it cease.
The idea of an international effort has echoes of the “coalition of the willing,” led by the U.K. and France, that was assembled to underpin Ukraine’s security in the event of a ceasefire in that war. The coalition is, in part, an attempt to demonstrate to Washington that Europe is doing more for its own security in the face of frequent criticism from Trump.
The conflict is driving up prices for oil and natural gas, roiling stock markets, pushing up the cost of gasoline and threatening to make a range of goods, including food, more expensive.
On Thursday, Brent crude, the international standard, rose again and was at $108 in spot trading, up about 50% from Feb. 28 when Israel and the U.S. started the war.
Though the oil and gas that typically transits the strait is primarily sold to Asian nations, Japan and South Korea were the only two countries from the region joining Thursday's call about the strait. The supply of jet fuel has also been interrupted by the conflict, with consequences for travel worldwide.
Weissert reported from Washington and Rising from Bangkok. Associated Press writer David McHugh in Frankfurt, Germany, contributed to this story.
Mourners gather during a funeral procession for Alireza Tangsiri, head of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, and others killed in Israeli strikes in late March, in Tehran, Iran, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
A firefighter extinguishes a car at the site of Israeli airstrikes, in Beirut, Lebanon, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
People take cover in a bomb shelter as air raid sirens warn of incoming Iranian missile strikes in Bnei Brak, Israel, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Oded Balilty)
Members from the Popular Mobilization Forces attend a funeral of fighters who were killed in a U.S. airstrike, in Tal Afar, Nineveh province, north of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Members from the Popular Mobilization Forces attend a funeral of fighters who were killed in a U.S. airstrike, in Tal Afar, Nineveh province, north of Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
The Indian flagged LPG carrier Jag Vasant transporting liquefied petroleum gas, is seen at the Mumbai Port in Mumbai, India, after it arrived clearing the Strait of Hormuz, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
President Donald Trump walks from the Blue Room to speak about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
