A pioneering clean energy initiative is seeking to transform Bermuda’s power landscape by establishing the island’s first community-powered virtual power plant.

The proposed scheme, Mesh, has been promulgated through a website by mechanical engineer Connor Burns, the owner and director of Onsite Engineering Services Ltd.

The plan is to link privately owned rooftop solar panels and residential battery storage systems into a single, “intelligent” electrical network.

By aggregating distributed clean energy resources across the island, the independent initiative aims to stabilise the local power supply, displace costly fossil-fuel generation, and reduce overall electricity expenses for the public.

Operating as an independent research pilot supported by local engineering and commercial infrastructure partners, Mesh is enrolling early adopters for Phase 1 connectivity testing.

The initial roll-out is open to homeowners equipped with Tesla or Enphase solar and battery hardware and such owners are being asked to sign up for a consultative phase.

Integration would be completed entirely via software using secure application programming interface credentials, requiring no additional hardware installation on local properties, according to the website.

Participating homeowners would retain full authority over their equipment and undergo brief 30-minute remote control tests, receiving advance notice before each trial and maintaining the ability to opt out, or revoke access at any time.

The pilot is designed to demonstrate how aggregated battery dispatches can support the electrical grid by holding frequency and voltage levels steady while adding distributed resilience.

In doing so, the network aims to replace expensive fossil-fuel spinning reserves and peaking turbines, cutting the need for costly new central power plant infrastructure.

While Phase 1 focuses exclusively on residential solar and batteries, Mesh plans to scale up to a target capacity of five to eight megawatts for its Phase 2 roll-out.

The platform is also designed to expand across the grid to include electric vehicle charging, smart water heaters, back-up generators and commercial air conditioning systems.

The website says Mesh operates independently of Bermuda's primary electric utility, Belco, and does not offer direct financial compensation during Phase 1 testing outside existing utility rebate programmes.

However, the pilot's overarching objective is to collect real-world operational data to present to Bermuda’s Regulatory Authority.

Organisers hope this data will help shape permanent regulations that financially reward clean energy investors and lower power costs island-wide.

They say similar VPP models have already demonstrated dramatic results on other island grids, including Puerto Rico, where 70,000 aggregated batteries help prevent blackouts, and the US Virgin Islands, which achieved a 79 per cent blackout reduction.

The web portal can be found at https://mesh.bm/.