NBC News Top Stories | Utility companies want to pay you to generate power for the electrical grid by Maya Huter, Brian Cheung
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Utility companies are increasingly paying homeowners to generate electricity and feed excess power back into the grid through virtual power plants (VPPs). In Houston, Jeff and Jenny Wright have turned their solar‑panel‑equipped home, complemented by two Tesla battery packs, into a VPP participant that earns them monthly credits and a $240 annual reward from Sunrun, effectively eliminating their electric bill. VPPs now operate or are being developed in 35 states and Washington, D.C., with the largest networks in California and Texas, and could cut U.S. peak demand by as much as 60 GW by 2030, alleviating strain on an aging grid that must support rapidly expanding electricity needs, including AI data centers. Sunrun reports 107,000 VPP customers who supplied 18 GWh to the grid in 2025—enough to power 15 million homes for an hour—and plans to expand its dispatchable‑battery capacity to 10 GWh by 2028. Industry leaders argue that aggregating residential solar and storage can replace the years‑long construction time of traditional power plants, making decentralized, resilient energy generation a viable solution to the nation’s growing power demand.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/business/energy/virtual-power-plants-texas-energy-rcna347299
#Tesla #Sunrun #RMI #DOE #Reliant #JeffWright #JennyWright