Alphabet's Google expands Voltus virtual power plant agreement to 1 GW
Google will fund flexible household and business resources in PJM, but the companies disclose no price or delivery schedule.
Ines Halvorsen
A 1-gigawatt virtual power plant is planned for the PJM grid under an Oct. 22 expanded agreement between Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. NASDAQGOOGL NASDAQGOOG, and Voltus.
Neither company disclosed a price for the 1-gigawatt portfolio, a cost per megawatt-hour or a schedule for customer payments. Privately held Voltus will aggregate flexible resources from homes and businesses, expanding a three-year agreement announced June 2 for up to 100 megawatts each year.
Google funds the portfolio, while participating customers receive bill savings and cash payments for making resources available. The Oct. 22 announcements do not specify the expanded agreement's duration or when its capacity will become available.
Alphabet's Class A shares closed lower at US$320.21 on Nasdaq at 4:00 p.m. EDT on Oct. 23, according to NASDAQGOOGL.
The arrangement uses batteries, smart thermostats and industrial equipment to reduce demand when the grid is strained. Voltus signals participating sites to discharge stored electricity or adjust consumption, freeing capacity for other users during those periods.
That makes the agreement a way to accommodate additional demand through coordinated flexibility. It does not establish a continuous electricity supply to a particular data centre, and the announcements identify no dedicated generating station.
The announced megawatts measure flexible capacity, without specifying how much electricity those resources would deliver or avoid consuming over a year.
Voltus's Oct. 22 release describes an additional 1,070 megawatts, while Google's announcement describes a 1-gigawatt portfolio. The companies do not reconcile those figures or provide a commissioning schedule for the expansion.
"Procuring this capacity through a gigawatt-scale virtual power plant ensures Google's operations in PJM support regional reliability and deliver direct economic benefits to local communities," said Ellen Zuckerman, Google's head of energy market development for North and South America.
Google says the programme will support affordability, but neither announcement quantifies savings for participating households or other electricity customers. Payments to participants and reductions in system costs are distinct outcomes; the releases give no price with which to assess Google's cost of securing capacity.
Read more: Entergy sets out US$600M Google-backed Arkansas grid expansion
Sunrun Offers A Route To Household Capacity
Sunrun Inc. NASDAQRUN, a residential battery and solar provider, announced an agreement with Voltus on Aug. 17 to supply capacity from a portion of its household systems in PJM and MISO.
Sunrun did not allocate a megawatt amount to Google's expanded agreement. Its release concerns Voltus's broader programmes for large data centre customers, so that supplier relationship does not establish how much of Google's portfolio will come from Sunrun batteries.
Sunrun identified customer enrolment and authorization, battery availability, dispatch accuracy and applicable utility and PJM market rules as risks to delivery. Its announcement supplies no customer payment rate or Google-specific revenue figure.
The next delivery milestone is bringing the expanded portfolio's resources into service. Neither Google nor Voltus set a date for that step in their Oct. 22 announcements.
