I'm not familiar. I'm in the Mid-Atlantic. I don't suppose it's a discount in exchange for ripping out your supplemental resistance coils, is it?

You can still save a lot of fuel and emissions with dispatchable solar, especially where gas is expensive or climate policy is good.

Dispatchable is not totally firm, so you'll still need quite a bit of thermal capacity to cover your winter heating peak. And once that capacity exists, your solar is competing with the variable costs of gas, not the LCOE. This is why we still need policy.

Reagan sold missiles to Iran to fund death squads in Nicaragua.

Arrest the criminal ICE agents. Until then, you are tolerating it.

Do VPPs factor into distribution network planning? Is there even a mechanism to allow the utility to dispatch batteries circuit by circuit?

I believe this is called juxtaposition