As it builds out data centers, the tech firm was already planning to pay Voltus for 100 MW of VPP capacity in the region. It just amped its goal up tenfold.

Google just upped the ante on its plans to leverage thousands of homes’ energy use to free up space on the grid for data centers.

The tech giant and the California-based firm Voltus announced Thursday that they are going after a gigawatt of virtual power plant capacity in PJM Interconnection, the country’s biggest and most data center-impacted energy market. 

Virtual power plants are essentially networks of homes and businesses whose energy consumption can be controlled via software. Voltus has been in the related demand-response business for nearly a decade, and in 2025 unveiled its ​“bring your own capacity” idea, in which data center developers would pay other utility customers to reduce power use when electricity demand peaks. That could help avoid the need for a massive and expensive buildout of traditional power plants and grid infrastructure to meet computing facilities’ energy demand.

Google is so far the only data center developer that Voltus has publicly partnered with on this approach. Thursday’s announcement builds on an initial 100-megawatt VPP target the companies set in June.

“The first 100 megawatts was always the first bite,” said Voltus CEO Dana Guernsey. ​“We were always looking at how we bring this to scale, because scale is what we need.” 

That’s certainly true in PJM , which has seen the cost of securing enough power to meet peak demands rise more than eightfold in the past few years.

Source link