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Google is fully funding PG&E's new SHARE virtual power plant through 2027, which will enroll nearly 21,000 existing residential batteries and thermostats from Tesla, Sunrun, and Renew Home across two Northern California counties to boost grid capacity without rate hikes.

What is a key fact in this story? (1)

**PG&E** launched the SHARE virtual power plant on Sept. 3 with Google, Rewiring America, and Demand Side Analytics as a proof-of-concept in two Northern California counties, aiming to create additional capacity, boost reliability, and put "downward pressure on rates."

What is a key fact in this story? (2)

**Google** is fully funding the SHARE program through 2027, with initial findings to be shared publicly later this year or in early 2027, and the pilot could eventually expand to commercial, industrial, and utility-scale assets.

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Google bankrolls PG&E SHARE virtual power plant pilot — SkimNews

By Utility Dive · Summarized & edited by Kapil Samant · 2026-09-10

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PG&E launched the SHARE virtual power plant on Sept. 3 with Google, Rewiring America, and Demand Side Analytics as a proof-of-concept in two Northern California counties, aiming to create additional capacity, boost reliability, and put "downward pressure on rates."
Google is fully funding the SHARE program through 2027, with initial findings to be shared publicly later this year or in early 2027, and the pilot could eventually expand to commercial, industrial, and utility-scale assets.
Tesla, Sunrun, and Renew Home will begin enrolling nearly 21,000 existing residential flexible energy devices — including batteries and millions of smart thermostats — into SHARE this fall, with Renew Home alone controlling 4 GW and counting of load.
California accounts for 4.7 GW of the nearly 17 GW of flexible energy capacity the three device providers said in June they could collectively unlock nationwide, split about 75/25 between batteries and thermostats.
Carrier will deploy new variable-speed residential heat pumps with up to 10 kWh of integrated battery capacity to support SHARE, extending a pilot launched last year with the Electric Power Research Institute.
SHARE is an early real-world test of a proposition Rewiring America floated last year that hyperscalers like Google can offset near-term AI compute power demand at lower cost than new gas-fired generation by subsidizing distributed energy resources at scale.

Why it matters: Google is directly subsidizing PG&E's deployment of 21,000 residential batteries and thermostats in two counties to demonstrate that hyperscaler-funded distributed energy can add grid capacity for AI-era demand without raising rates or building gas plants — and the 4.7 GW of California flexible capacity already in place gives PG&E a fast, low-cost lever that could outpace traditional generation buildouts if the proof-of-concept scales.