Overview
- Voltus and Google announced a three-year commercial agreement on Tuesday to aggregate up to 100 megawatts of distributed energy resources each year into a Google-funded virtual power plant in the PJM grid.
- Under Voltus’s Bring Your Own Capacity program the company will enroll batteries, smart thermostats and other flexible loads from homes and businesses and pay participants with funds provided by Google.
- Voltus will coordinate enrolled devices to free up accredited capacity during peak demand instead of providing continuous energy, and it says the VPP should be operational in 2027.
- Industry experts say the deal creates a new pathway for large electricity users to secure near-term capacity and could become a model for other hyperscalers facing PJM interconnection delays.
- Key questions remain about how much participants will be paid, how many customers will enroll, how utilities and regulators will coordinate with the VPP, and the practical limits of data-center load flexibility.