Renew Home

Millions of households are choosing to use Energy Shift to automatically manage their home energy use and save. The results at scale are striking. With this type of flexible capacity, utilities can get better utilization out of the grid they already have. And better utilization can lower rates for everyone. A new piece from  Jeff St. John at Canary Media Inc. shows what that looks like at scale: ⚡ 27 MW of peak relief delivered in Arizona with @Salt River Project on top of their demand response program — without changing customer routines or impacting their comfort.  ⚡ 380 MW of load reduction in PJM territory on a single July afternoon. That’s just a fraction of what the full fleet could deliver. This is what comfort-first demand flexibility looks like in practice. Thanks to Salt River Project and EnergyHub for the partnership, and to Jeff St. John for telling the story. https://lnkd.in/ebeU7XE5

Great to be at Latitude Media’s #TransitionAI conference this week. The timing couldn't be more critical. The conversation kept returning to one stark reality: we're facing the largest surge in electricity demand in a generation. One area gaining real traction that can help us navigate this transition: what if data centers helped fund distributed capacity by investing in communities so we can lower costs for everyone across the grid? That means helping to deploy and scale VPPs, which bring critical benefits to the system: Speed to power: Distributed capacity can be deployed immediately, compared to 5–7 years for substation upgrades. Cost-efficient: According to the DOE, a new VPP can deliver capacity at less than half the cost of a traditional gas peaker. A new VPP can deliver capacity at a net cost of ~$43/KW-year, versus ~$99/KW-year for a traditional gas peaker, according to the DOE. Proven at scale: During a July 2025 heat wave, Renew Home dispatched Energy Shift events across nearly half our fleet in PJM, reducing grid load by an estimated 380 MW in a two hour period. We are excited to work with partners across the industry to deploy aggregations of residential DERs at scale to help lower system costs for everyone. Thanks to moderator Matt Anderson and fellow panelists Astrid Atkinson, Alex Portilla, and Manali Gokhale for a lively and fun discussion.

As timelines for interconnection stretch into multiple years, data centers and utilities are looking for other options to unlock capacity faster. Demand-side solutions, virtual power plants, and flexible loads are emerging as some of the quickest paths to meeting this surging demand — with potential benefits for customer engagement and affordability as well. At Transition-AI 2026, we're excited to bring together a panel that incorporates vendor, corporate, and utility perspectives on this topic, including: Astrid Atkinson, CEO + Co-Founder, Camus Energy Ben Brown, CEO, Renew Home Manali Gokhale, Technical Program Manager, Advanced Energy Labs, Google Alex Portilla, Director, Clean Energy Technology Platforms, Pacific Gas and Electric Company Moderated by Matt Anderson, Senior Associate at The Ad Hoc Group, this session will dig into how aggregated distributed resources and contracted flexibility can deliver measurable, dependable capacity, and what can stand in the way of scaling them. Hear this discussion live in San Francisco on April 14! Register with the link in the comments. #TransitionAI #DERs #VirtualPowerPlants

“What’s really critical about Energy Shift Capacity is that it’s a resource that already exists at a meaningful scale that is equivalent to the size of multiple natural gas peakers… What we’re talking about here isn’t about building a future, it’s about engaging the now.” On the latest USEA Power Sector Podcast, our CEO Ben Brown joins Herman Trabish to break down how more than 5 million connected homes — and nearly 4 gigawatts of flexible capacity — are already helping households lower their energy bills. Here's what makes Renew Home’s VPP different: ⚡ No uncomfortable tradeoffs: Comfort comes first  ⚡Broader participation: We’re seeing higher engagement than traditional demand response programs by meeting people where they are  ⚡Lower-cost resource: Driving down system costs for everyone — even those not participating — without building new, costly infrastructure ⚡Real rewards: Value and savings flow to customers You can listen to the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/gQXSYtDv

We’re thrilled to partner with Renew Home as a Gold Sponsor for Transition-AI 2026. Renew Home is a leader in virtual power plants, aggregating and optimizing distributed energy resources, like smart thermostats, home batteries, and other residential devices, to reduce peak demand and support a more flexible, resilient grid. Their work is helping turn everyday homes into active participants in the energy system. We will be joined at Transition-AI 2026 by Ben Brown, CEO of Renew Home, , who will discuss strategies on the path forward. “We’re at a critical crossroads. The current debate is focused on two extremes: building massive new infrastructure to meet data center peaks, or taking data centers off-grid to move faster. Both paths come with tradeoffs that could shape the grid for a generation. But there’s a third solution we urgently need to bring to the table: scaling virtual power plants.” By leveraging the grid we already have and scaling accessible, peak-shifting technologies, Renew Home is helping demonstrate how AI and data centers can enhance, not strain, grid flexibility. Hear more from Ben and Renew Home, and join us in San Francisco April 13 & 14. #TransitionAI #EnergyTransition #DataCenters

We are honored to be named a Fast Company Most Innovative Company for 2026! 🏆 This recognition comes at a critical moment for the energy industry. With electricity demand and energy costs surging, households are looking for better ways to manage their energy use and lower their bills. At Renew Home, we believe the solution starts with enabling savings when it matters most. By helping households make subtle, comfort-first shifts in their energy use, we’re showing that we can help more people save. With millions of households participating, those individual actions can ladder up to power plant-sized capacity. And when households choose to participate they should be rewarded for the value they can add to the grid. Our solution, called Energy Shift Capacity, is ready to deploy and already delivering value today. Big thanks to the hard working team at Renew Home that makes this company special every day. We’re just getting started. Want to help us deliver meaningful savings and rewards to households and build the country’s largest residential virtual power plant? We’re hiring! Link to our careers page in the comments. #FCMostInnovative

Surging energy demand is driving up electricity prices, but a new analysis from The Brattle Group, GridLab, and Utilize Coalition shows a smarter path forward. Better grid utilization could help reduce U.S. electricity bills by more than $100 billion over the next decade. At Renew Home, better grid utilization starts with making it easier for households to save by automating small shifts that don't disrupt routines, and rewarding customers for making energy choices that help the grid when it matters most. We’ve shown that these household choices can scale to massive capacity, with more than 4GW of flexible capacity already available on the Renew Home platform. There are knock on benefits too. The report shows how better utilization can put downward pressure on rates over time and can help spur economic development by enabling large new electricity users – such as data centers – to accelerate interconnection to the grid by several years. We’re proud to be a founding member of Utilize Coalition, and look forward to the work ahead. Read the full report here: https://lnkd.in/gK66MXjX

We are proud to be a founding member of Utilize Coalition, a new industry coalition alongside Google, Tesla, Carrier, Sparkfund, SPAN and Verrus, aiming to tackle one of the biggest drivers of rising energy bills: grid underutilization. The U.S. electric grid currently operates at only ~50% capacity on average. By unlocking latent capacity through smarter technology and policy, we can meet surging demand utilizing infrastructure we already have. Better grid utilization can help keep costs down for households and deliver community benefits. At Renew Home, we are enabling this better utilization by helping households save energy with subtle, comfort-first shifts, and through programs that can help households save and earn rewards when they choose to help at the times the grid needs it most. We’ve already unlocked power plant sized capacity, and believe families should be rewarded for the value they provide to the grid. Our team is excited to work with this coalition, policymakers and the industry to support policy that enables rewards for customers' commitments to the grid, while putting downward pressure on all rates.

As distributed energy resources, demand response, and virtual power plants become more important than ever, we need to ensure customer comfort and value are center if these solutions are going to scale. Our CEO Ben Brown joined Elisa Wood on the Energy Changemakers podcast to talk about how Renew Home is addressing energy affordability and increasing demand with a new kind of customer energy program. They discuss the evolution of demand response and how Renew Home is building the bridge to scaled solutions: 💡 Energy management without lifestyle changes: small, personalized shifts can help reduce bills while households keep full comfort and control. 💰 Real rewards for helping the grid: when homes reduce peak demand, households should share directly in the value they help create. 📈 Flexibility that fits everyday life: subtle adjustments that people barely notice make participation easy to sustain at scale. “We want to build a platform and an experience that is very customer forward. We recognize that all of this doesn't work if you don't have an experience in people’s homes that actually gives them more control over their energy bills, more control over their comfort, and enhanced convenience.” 🎧 Catch the full episode at the link here: https://lnkd.in/gs9ePMBS