Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) has launched a large virtual power plant (VPP) program it is calling SHARE (Smart Home Assets for Reliability and Efficiency).
Credit: Carhartt/Sunrun
The California utility is working with Rewiring America, Google, Carrier, Tesla, Sunrun, Renew Home, Demand Side Analytics, encoord and other partners to deploy the new VPP in Bay Area communities.
SHARE combines enrollment of existing home energy devices with regional deployment of privately funded new electrification technologies to address growing electric demand.
“This is about delivering power at the speed our economy demands while improving affordability and reliability for the people we serve,” said Chelle Izzi, Chief Commercial Officer, PG&E. “SHARE shows how investing in customers can unlock grid capacity, support growth, and bring real benefits back to communities.”
PG&E is working with Tesla, Sunrun, and Renew Home to enroll nearly 21,000 existing flexible energy devices into the program. This will allow participating households to gain new ways to manage their energy costs and earn rewards for the smart features they already use, while shifting demand during peak periods helping make better use of existing infrastructure, benefiting customers across the region. The resource is expected to begin supporting the grid as early as fall 2026.
“Home energy devices hold enormous, untapped capacity that can meaningfully improve affordability and reliability for all Californians,” said Mary Powell, CEO of Sunrun. “This initiative unlocks that potential while giving customers an opportunity to share in the economic benefits of helping improve their local grid.”
Carrier is the initiative’s launch partner for the new deployments, providing its battery-enabled heat pump solution, including the Carrier Performance Series Variable-Speed Heat Pump with EnerSync, that automatically stores and shifts energy use to help lower costs for customers, maintain comfort and support grid reliability during periods of peak demand.
“As energy demand grows, SHARE demonstrates how Carrier can help deliver distributed capacity with the firmness to scale as a fast and reliable grid resource,” said Hakan Yilmaz, President, Carrier Energy, and Chief Sustainability Officer. “Carrier’s battery-enabled HVAC technology brings together our trusted comfort, market presence and dealer scale to help deliver homeowner value and reliable grid flexibility.”
SHARE reflects a shared commitment to responsible energy growth and is structured so that existing customers benefit from growing grid capacity needs. The program will be fully funded by Google to support customer incentives, technology deployment, and program delivery.
“As demand scales, our current electricity grid can bridge the gap if we optimize it correctly,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, Global Head of Energy & Power at Google. “This program unlocks the potential of local distributed energy resources to strengthen grid capacity and resiliency while delivering meaningful benefits for local communities.”
Rewiring America will work directly with households to deploy and enroll energy-saving electric technologies into SHARE that can serve as flexible grid resources while improving the customer experience. They will also work closely with local installers to ensure projects meet high quality and performance standards.
“This initiative shows how households can be part of the energy solution,” said Ari Matusiak, Founder and CEO of Rewiring America. “By helping families upgrade their homes with efficient electric technologies, we can lower costs, improve comfort, and optimize California’s grid capacity at the same time.”
PG&E will lead planning, analysis, and validation to evaluate customer impacts, system performance and long-term benefits.
PG&E and Rewiring America will begin reaching out to eligible customers starting fall 2026. SHARE is expected to run through 2027, with initial findings from the program expected to be shared in late 2026 or early 2027.
News item from PG&E
First we heard something from NVIDIA partnering with SPAN and with some builder to install their products at new constructed homes and make money while the homeowner is left holding the bag.
Now we have PGE partnering with Carrier to sell their Heat Pumps to homeowners and make money.
Why does somebody not come up with a simple method to use the excess solar produced Electricity by homeowners and pay them directly without selling them new equipment that they don’t need.
PGE already had a NET Metering program where they were supposed to just pay standard rate for the excess electricity and they thought it was too much and wanted to pay wholesale prices. Now they are up to some new methods to make the homeowners pay more.
Locally, we are proceeding too slowly to develop our most efficient energy assets: Widely distributed, Community Virtual Power Plants, powered by solar parking lot canopies, with integrated non-flammable battery storage systems and Vehicle-to-Grid chargers.
Shading our large existing commercial and multi-family residential parking lots with solar canopies will accelerate a new Community Tier of reliable, affordable energy. It will rapidly increase local low-cost EV charging infrastructure, shave the expensive peak utility transmission demands of commercial refrigeration and residential HVAC, and permanently electrify, reduce and stabilize all energy costs for our small business owners, residential rate payers, and commuters.
We already see these solar parking lot power plants in operation at our local hospitals and education facilities. Why aren’t they everywhere?
Because our local government agencies are not yet equipped to expedite them. This is why we need the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) to build a standardized, tested, Community Energy Template to de-risk and expedite Virtual Power Plants across the entire Bay Area.
With PG&E’s track record of changing more, plus surcharges from people with solar systems on their homes and screwing over homeowners who invested in solar in the first place, how is power sharing going to help those who have invested in purchasing batteries and control systems? How long until the utility steals all the battery capacities to screw over the homeowners? It will be let’s pay the owners a penny to take the power, then charge the homeowners 15 cents when they need power to recharge.. makes no sense to trust PG&E… if I would install a system, it would be for my use only, to remove any need to draw anything from the grid …