In the past we have advocated that you sign up with Ohm Connect. They send you an alert, usually once a week, when there is high demand for electricity, and you power down what you can. Since Ohm Connect has hundreds of thousands of users the resulting reductions of demand keep gas-powered “peaker plants” off line. And you get cash or other benefits for saving electricity.
The article below is about a new large-scale extension to this approach. Although it is not available here yet, this new program seems promising because it pursues the doubling of efficiency that was established as a goal in COP 28.
If you want to join Ohm Connect, 350 Humboldt gets a reward if you use this link to sign up: https://refer.ohm.co/dwchandl
While not the main lever for reducing warming, technological innovations like this and the new methods to double the electricity that existing transmission lines can carry are important and provide hope.
350 Humboldt
Steering Committee
Google-Backed Company Merger Eyes Massive Virtual
Power Plant
In a bid to link millions of homes together to more effectively manage electricity, Nest Renew is joining forces with software company OhmConnect.
Homes in a subdivision in Atlanta, Georgia. Renew Home, a new company, will link millions of homes together as a virtual power plant to help improve grid reliability. Nest Renew, a Google service that helps individuals optimize electricity consumption, and software company OhmConnect are merging in a bid to build a so-called virtual power plant that would improve grid reliability as more renewables come online.
OhmConnect pays users to reduce electricity consumption when energy demand is high. Nest Renew provides homes with a smart thermostat that automatically reduces energy usage when prices are high and prioritizes usage when renewable energy is available.
The new company, Renew Home, is expected to combine both, building a network of millions of homes. That network would act as a virtual, decentralized power plant that will be the largest in the US.
Virtual power plants rely on solar panels, batteries and other forms of distributed energy production and storage that can be called on to supply power when the electrical grid is stretched. In addition to supplying electricity, virtual power plants can also work by curtailing home energy use in times of high demand. Doing so can reduce the need for pollution-producing power plants that can quickly kick into gear.
“There’s an increase of electricity load coming from new sources of demand, most notably electric vehicle charging, but also from things like electrified clean heating,” said Felicia Aminoff, a BloombergNEF research associate for Europe Power Grids, Utility and Flexibility Markets. “By using these kinds of smart technologies, you can utilize the existing grid more efficiently.”
That’s increasingly important as more weather-dependent renewable energy comes online. By charging an EV or running the dishwasher in the middle of the day when solar output is at its highest, individuals can make use of clean energy sources when they’re available.
Thermostats and other smart homer technologies have come under scrutiny for the amount of data they collect. In the case of smart thermostats, that can include temperature, humidity, light, location and movement, among other variables that can be paired with data from other sources. Some research has also shown that smart thermostats can sometimes increase home energy use.
Renew Home plans to be able to have over 30 gigawatts of capacity — enough to power 10 million homes — by 2030, according to Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP), a sustainable infrastructure company that fully funded the merger with a $100 million investment. (The firm is a spin-off of Sidewalk Labs, a Google company that faced intense scrutiny for privacy concerns over a smart city project in Toronto and ultimately dissolved in 2021.)
“It’s the cheapest, fastest way that we might actually be able to bring grid edge flexibility in the next five years when we need it, as we know there’s going to be increased reliability issues with increased intermittent renewable energy,” said Jonathan Winer, founder of SIP.
Renew Home’s service will also help customers save money by reducing their energy use in times of high demand. Last year, OhmConnect reported that its members received $2.7 million for conserving energy during a nine-day heatwave in California that stretched the grid to the limits. Renew Home plans to do even better. The company could save people more than $6 billion on energy over the first 5 years, according to SIP’s projections.
“That’s $170 in average savings per household each year — a meaningful amount that will make a real difference for low- and middle-income families across the country,” SIP wrote in a blogpost.