March 25, 2025
Sunrun And Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (PG&E) have formed an innovative partnership to help strengthen the California electric grid.
The collaboration will use hundreds of Sunrun Solar + Storage Customer Houses to offer targeted tax lighting to neighborhoods that have been identified with very limited electric schedules. The purpose of this approach is to help in avoiding or postponing growth-related distribution investments, which reduces the costs for ratepayers.
The Sunrun-Efforted virtual power plant (VPP) program is activated from June to October and comprises approximately 600 Sunrun customers who live in sections of the PG&E service area that experience distribution circuit restrictions.
“Customers with home batteries are a solution for relieving the tension on our electric grid,” said Mary Powell, CEO of Sunrun, who offers clean energy as a subscription service. “We experience a fundamental shift, because houses are no longer only energy consumers. With storage and solar energy, they become powerful gridactiva and deliver affordable, reliable force exactly when and where it is needed for communities and about the schedule.”
The local Peakshift Power Program from Sunrun is part of PG&E’s 2025 seasonal aggregation of versatile energy (SAVE) virtual power plant. In this demonstration, Sunrun receives information from PG&E about distribution trait and helps in turn to analyze PG&E the contributions of distributed energy sources. This cooperation will support the development of new long-term programs to meet the load-shifting goals of the California Energy Commission and at the same time improve local reliability.
“Virtual power plants play an important role in the Future Clean Energy in California and we are proud of our customers who lead with their acceptance of clean energy,” said Patti Poppe, CEO of PG&E. “Every day we look at new and better ways to deliver for our hometown, while we ensure safety, reliability and resilience for our customers.”
The delivery of targeted electricity to local PG&E circuits will use the deep existing partnerships of Sunrun with leading companies Tesla and Lunar Energy. Sunrun will use an advanced application of the Grid Services platform from Tesla to optimize PowerWall batteries to offer an exact amount of electricity to different locations at specific times. Likewise, Sunrun will use the AI-compatible prediction of Lunar Energy via its Gridshare software platform to send exactly different non-tesla battery types to meet local grid needs.
This collaboration marks the second time Sunrun and PG&E work together to create a virtual power plant to support the Power Grid of California. Both partnerships emphasize the ability of Sunrun to design virtual power plants and quickly use that meet the specific needs of grid operators. Local Peakshift capacity will be operationalized in just a few months, which demonstrates the speed and efficiency of Sunrun’s virtual power plants.
Sunrun customers who are registered in local Peakshift Power receive a one-off payment of $ 150 per battery for sharing their stored solar energy with their communities, while Sunrun is compensated for managing battery shipments. Registered batteries always retain at least a back -upres reserve of 20% to guarantee the availability of electricity at the houses of customers in the case of a power outage.
With 156,000 residential battery systems throughout the country, Sunrun can support targeted utilities and programs throughout the state. Sunrun’s Grid Services platform and subscription model ensure flexibility when it comes to registering customers in different programs to achieve the highest value for the company, its customers and the net.
Tags: PG&E, Sunrun, Utility-Scale
