Google pays family businesses to reduce electricity use, freeing up grid capacity for data centers

Google has reached an agreement with energy service company Voltus to establish a virtual power plant in the PJM grid in the US Mid-Atlantic region, capable of releasing up to 1070MW of power capacity when needed. Economic incentives are used to encourage households and businesses to reduce electricity consumption during peak hours, with partial adjustments supported for automatic completion. Google calls the virtual power plant a key short-term solution and reveals that this transaction is one of the largest projects to date for tech giants to pay for grid capacity.