LUMA Energy
David Cruz is LUMA Energy Program Manager for Electric Vehicles and Demand Response, managing the second biggest home battery VPP in the world. Under his leadership, the LUMA team led the expansion of the CBES program from 5,000 to 110,000 customers. His team earned national recognition, winning the PUF Top Innovator Award and more recently, the Award of Excellence from the Peak Load Management Alliance. Previously, he worked in Silicon Valley helping startups in the robotics and autonomous vehicle industry scale and improve operational efficiency across U.S. and Europe.
PUF recognizes each year those across the utilities industry who are not content to accept the status quo. Our Fortnightly Top Innovators stand out for ingenuity, resilience, and how they move the industry forward.
As PUF readies for Top Innovators 2026, we caught up with three 2025 award-winning innovators for a look at how their projects have advanced. These remarkable leaders reflect every dimension of the energy and utility industry’s transformation.
In these conversations, you will learn more about these innovative projects with APS’s Kerri Carnes on Virtual Power Plant Delivering Targeted Grid Support, Eversource’s Meiyan Li on Advancing DER Integration with Automated Model Validation Across Time Domains, and LUMA Energy’s David Cruz on Customer Battery Energy Sharing.
PUF’s Rachel Bryant: Last year’s award celebrated your Virtual Power Plant (VPP) aggregating thousands of customer batteries. Where has this energy-sharing program expanded, and how many active participants are enrolled today?
David Cruz: We have seen incredible momentum since receiving the award. The program has expanded significantly, and today we have reached an active base of approximately 110,000 customers.