Renew Home, a partnership between Google Nest Renew and OhmConnect, aims to increase electricity consumption from 3 GW to 50 GW by 2030.
A new virtual power plant (VPP) solution has been launched through the partnership of Google Nest Renew and OhmConnect. The new company, Renew Home, aims to expand electricity consumption from 3 GW to 50 GW by 2030.
VPPs are collections of distributed energy resources, such as rooftop solar, batteries, electric vehicles and smart devices. The energy stored or managed by these resources can help balance electricity supply and demand, and can provide network services such as those provided by fossil fuel power plants.
In “Pathways to Commercial Launch: Virtual Power Plants,” the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that if the current size of VPPs were to triple, it could accommodate as much as 20% of growing peak demand. The DOE predicts that concurrent peak demand on the electric grid will increase from approximately 740 GW to 800 GW by 2030. As fossil fuel plants are retired, new demand must be met by new resources such as clean energy VPPs.
OhmConnect is a service designed to provide alerts on energy consumption, and can even automatically turn off appliances at certain times of the day to reduce usage and save money on electricity bills. Google Nest is a range of smart home products such as smart thermostats, routers, doorbells, security systems and more. Together they formed Renew Home, a Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP) company. SIP was formed from Alphabet with anchor partners including the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
With a $100 million investment from majority owner SIP, Renew Home aims to enable American homes to work together to reduce and shift their energy consumption.
“The combination of Nest’s innovative approach to managing home energy consumption with OhmConnect’s customer-centric network services platform will be transformative,” said Ben Brown, CEO of Renew Home. “With our industry-leading partners, Renew Home will be able to coordinate the energy consumption of millions of customers at home to help us achieve a 100% clean energy future.”
Brown previously worked at Google, where he led many consumer products and services for Google Home and Nest. Before Google, he developed climate and energy tools for the United Nations, the DOE, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Renew Home works with the Google Home APIs as a platform provider of integrations to monitor appliances and energy consumption. The company says it also integrates with dozens of additional appliances and home appliances, including LG, Honeywell, SunPower, Sense and others, and reports that it will support demand response and VPP programs with more than 100 utilities.
“This is a pivotal moment for virtual power plants,” said Alan Machuga, CTO of Rheem. “We are excited to partner with Renew Home to help customers save money and energy – while supporting the electric grid. As a leading manufacturer of HVAC and water heating products, Rheem uniquely offers both energy savings and energy storage potential, with water heaters playing a critical role.”
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