Renew Home Launches America’s Largest Residential Virtual Power Plant in Collaboration with Google’s Nest Renew and OhmConnect

A groundbreaking collaboration between Google’s Nest Renew service and OhmConnect has led to the launch of Renew Home, America’s largest residential virtual power plant (VPP). This innovative venture aims to unite millions of customers nationwide, offering grid stabilization and reduced home energy costs.

Renew Home already controls nearly 3GW of electrical energy use and has ambitious plans to expand to 50GW by 2030, constituting approximately 25% of the total VPP growth forecasted by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The DOE projects that by tripling the scale of VPPs, we could meet 10-20% of peak electricity demand by 2030, potentially avoiding $10 billion in grid costs.

With a substantial $100M investment from majority owner Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP), Renew Home aims to revolutionize residential energy consumption by enabling millions of homes across the country to collectively reduce and shift their energy use.

Renew Home CEO Ben Brown expressed enthusiasm for the transformative potential of the partnership, stating, “The marriage of Nest’s innovative approach to managing energy use in the home with OhmConnect’s customer-focused grid services platform will be transformational.”

Renew Home is already leveraging Google Home APIs as a platform provider for integrating and controlling devices and energy use in millions of homes. The company also collaborates with numerous other device and appliance manufacturers, including LG, Honeywell, SunPower, and Sense, and intends to support demand response and VPP programs with over 100 utilities.

Alan Machuga, CTO of Rheem, emphasized the significance of this milestone for virtual power plants, highlighting Rheem’s partnership with Renew Home to help customers save money and energy while supporting the grid.

Virtual power plants, as defined by the DOE, are aggregations of distributed energy resources, including rooftop solar, behind-the-meter batteries, electric vehicles and chargers, electric water heaters, smart buildings and their controls, and flexible commercial and industrial loads. These resources play a crucial role in balancing electricity demand and supply and providing utility-scale grid services.