Hello solar enthusiasts! There’s some electrifying news that’s charging up the industry and I’m here to shed some light on it. A remarkable new partnership between Google Nest Renew and OhmConnect has sparked the formation of a brand new solar company, Renew Home. The objective? A stellar expansion from using 3GW of electrical energy use to a whopping 50GW by 2030. You read it right – this company is set to radically revolutionize the solar array for homes.
Virtual Power Plants or VPPs (another exciting slice of solar jargon for you) are a key player in distributed energy resources. If you’re exploring solar panels for your home or other solar companies, you’ll want to be familiar with VPPs. Essentially, these are a combination of resources such as rooftop solar, electric vehicles, smart appliances, batteries, and more. These resources can manage energy storage, balance electricity supply and demand, ditching the need for traditional power plants. Still with me?
The U.S. Department of Energy produced a fascinating report called Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Virtual Power Plants. In it, they estimated that if we could triple the current scale of VPPs, we could potentially tackle up to 20% of the increasing peak demand, which is predicted to shoot from 740GW to 800GW by 2030. This means replacing retired fossil-fuel plants with energy-efficient alternatives like clean energy VPPs.
Let’s pivot to OhmConnect. In the world of energy use alerts and intelligent power-down algorithms designed to save you money on electricity bills, this service is a game-changer. Pair it with Google Nest, a popular product line offering smart home solutions, and you have a powerful alliance trailblazing the green energy market.
With a staggering $100 million investment from Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, Renew Home is ambitiously planning to enable U.S homes to collectively shift and trim down their energy use. As the saying goes, “It’s not about the cards you’re dealt, but how you play the hand” – this marriage between Nest’s innovative approach to home energy management and OhmConnect’s customer-centric grid service model certainly seems to be holding a royal flush.
Under the command of CEO Ben Brown, whose pedigree includes the United Nations, DOE, EPA and of course, Google (where he spearheaded Google Home and Nest consumer products), Renew Home promises to coordinate the energy use of millions of customers, potentially catapulting us straight into a 100% clean energy future.
Overall, this is a significant moment for the development and implementation of virtual power plants. As Alan Machuga, the CTO of Rheem pointed out, this is an opportunity to lower costs and energy consumption, offering support to the grid.
By working in harmony with the Google Home APIs and several other home appliances and devices, Renew Home is not just another solar company. Instead, it represents a remarkable shift in the way we think about energy consumption and savings. Are you as electrified about these solar developments as I am? I certainly hope so!
Original Articlehttps://pv-magazine-usa.com/2024/05/13/renew-home-launches-with-virtual-power-plant-solution/
