Google will fund a 1 gigawatt virtual power plant run by Voltus on the PJM grid, with the capacity meant to supply its operations in the region.
The new commitment adds 1,070 megawatts to the 100 megawatts the two companies agreed in June, they said. That makes the latest tranche more than 10 times the size of the first. Terms were not disclosed.
A virtual power plant is software that coordinates many scattered resources, such as batteries or equipment that can cut its electricity use on request, so they behave like one generator. Nothing gets poured in concrete. The capacity comes from flexibility that already exists, bundled and sold as a dependable block.
PJM is one of the largest grid operators in the country. It serves 67 million customers across 13 states and the District of Columbia, so a project of this size is a meaningful addition to a shared system, not a rounding error.
The interesting part is who is paying. A big electricity user is financing supply-side capacity for itself instead of waiting for the grid to expand around it. Going from 100 megawatts to more than 1,000 within a single partnership suggests the first deal gave Google reason to scale up, though the companies did not say what drove the decision.
The open question is performance. A virtual power plant earns its keep only if thousands of small resources respond together when the grid is tight, and a deal this size will be judged on exactly that.