Voltus has announced a three-year Bring Your Own Capacity agreement with Google to aggregate up to 100 megawatts (MW) of distributed energy resources (DERs) annually from local businesses and homes into a Google-funded virtual power plant (VPP) in PJM territory.
Through the agreement, Voltus will aggregate flexible assets such as batteries, smart thermostats, and other DERs into a coordinated VPP. During periods of peak demand, the system simultaneously accesses and adjusts thousands of devices to reduce grid stress and free up capacity.
Participating customers will receive direct payments, turning Google’s capacity demand into economic benefits for PJM communities.
“We are excited to add this new solution to a growing toolkit that can accelerate a robust, flexible energy system, and to partner with Voltus to scale a first-of-its-kind model for unlocking capacity to meet new data center growth,” said Michael Terrell, Global Head of Advanced Energy at Google, in a statement.
The agreement aims to establish a scalable blueprint for how large energy users like data centers can meet capacity needs through smarter utilization of existing grid infrastructure rather than costly physical expansion.
The deal builds on Google’s broader efforts to advance demand-side grid solutions, including making its own data center demand more flexible to unlock 1 gigawatt (GW) of demand response capacity for U.S. power systems.
Dana Guernsey, CEO of Voltus, added, “This initial phase of our Google partnership is pioneering a model that large load customers can follow, and we expect it to accelerate the role of distributed energy resources as a capacity solution at scale.”
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