Sunrun is teaming up with distributed generation management platform Voltus to put residential and commercial solar-plus-storage systems to work reducing grid demand from hyperscale data centers.

The service, which operates much like a virtual power plant program, would allot "a portion" of the capacity from Sunrun's installed solar and storage project base — the nation's largest residential solar fleet — to grid operators PJM and MISO, which coordinate the high-voltage grid across much of the central and eastern United States, according to a press release. The operators could then tap those distributed energy resources in response to the energy pull from data centers, and participating system owners would be paid for their energy exports.

"Meeting growing energy demand requires us to maximize every single electron available across the country," said Sunrun CEO Mary Powell in a press release. "In collaboration with Voltus, we are providing critical capacity from home batteries supported by funding from hyperscalers. This is just the beginning of what distributed energy assets can achieve." Sunrun has already operated similar virtual power plant programs, enrolling networks of customer batteries to support utilities during periods of grid stress.

Electricity demand on the U.S. grid is climbing — and so is the cost of power — as hyperscale data centers are built across the country to support generative AI technologies, including large language models such as OpenAI's ChatGPT. PJM's capacity auction for the 2025/2026 delivery year cleared at a record $269.92 per megawatt-day, up from $28.92 the year before, an increase the market monitor attributed in part to data center load growth. In 2023, grid-tied data centers accounted for less than 5% of the country's energy usage, but a study published by the Congressional Research Service found that hyperscale data center proliferation could double or even triple that usage by 2028.

Voltus, which aggregates demand response and other distributed energy resources into wholesale markets across the United States and Canada, introduced its "Bring Your Own Capacity" program last year in response to increasing energy demand from data centers and hopes the service can offer a fast solution to data center energy needs. That urgency is growing: in June, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright urged grid operators to bring data centers online faster, and FERC members voted unanimously to support this initiative. The commission has also been examining how very large loads such as data centers connect to the grid, including co-location arrangements at existing power plants, as regulators weigh reliability and cost-allocation questions.

"[Bring Your Own Capacity] is about turning distributed resources into capacity the grid can count on, and maximizing value for the end user," said Dana Guernsey, CEO of Voltus, in a press release. "This partnership brings together Sunrun's residential scale with Voltus's market-integrated flexibility platform so distributed capacity can support reliability, affordability, and growth as electricity demand increases."

Source: Solar Power World