Energy Shift Capacity: 4GW of New Flexible Capacity Ready to be Rewarded Now

Millions of households have turned on Energy Shift to manage energy costs, usage, and support their communities. New study from Renew Home shows that consumers' choices add up to something very real: capacity at the size of multiple power plants.

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 4, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- As energy demand rises and many household electricity bills outpace inflation, Renew Home believes it should be much easier for people to lower their costs with subtle and personalized energy adjustments—all while staying in control of their comfort and usage.

Energy Shift, originally developed as part of Google Nest Renew¹ but now powered by Renew Home, was designed to make it easier for households to prioritize cheaper or cleaner energy through subtle adjustments in usage — often unnoticed by users — while maintaining comfort and control. This year, customers with Energy Shift on Time-of-use (TOU) rates in California were able to save an average of about $35 on their bills this summer². And thanks to a flexible energy market, soon will be able to share an additional $15 credit with consumers for linking their utility and opting in to smart summer cooling, bringing the total available savings for an average TOU household to $50 for the summer².

"We're thrilled to see how Energy Shifts are helping customers on Time-of-Use rates in California not only save money, but also unlock additional cooling credits from the energy market," said Jeff Gleeson, Chief Product Officer at Renew Home. "It's a powerful proof point that when we focus first on delivering savings and comfort at home, the collective impact of customer participation can help everyone earn even more back."

Energy Shift can form the foundation of a new type of customer energy program that can make it easy for customers to save and to earn money back—thanks to the benefits their collective savings choices can provide to the grid; all while keeping comfort and control at the center of the experience.

Today Renew Home released its first study on Energy Shift Capacity —demonstrating a new way for customers to save and earn money back. Renew Home's analysis shows that these collective customer choices now add up to something much bigger. When households participate together, their aggregate adjustments provide real community impact at the grid level. Renew Home is able to help these households magnify their impact through an offering called Energy Shift Capacity (ESC) which provides real capacity for a strained grid.

During a summer heatwave in PJM, ESC was able to provide 380 MW of two-hour peak reduction capacity, at a time when capacity constraints are being acutely felt by customers and the grid alike. This peak capacity was equivalent to the output of multiple natural gas peaker plants. With nearly 4 GW of flexible capacity available nationwide—the equivalent of more than 40 typical size natural gas peaker plants—the white paper demonstrates that thanks to households who have signed up for smart, increasingly personalized Energy Shifts, ESC is reliable, scalable, and ready to help households manage rising energy costs.

The white paper analyzed ESC's potential through a study of 25 million Energy Shifts across 4.1 million households in 27 U.S. states, during the Summer 2025 peak load season. The analysis found that personalized Energy Shifts provided about 79% of the load impact that traditional DR would have provided in hour 1 for these events (0.82 kW per thermostat for Energy Shifts vs 1.04 kW for traditional DR).

ESC provides a new class of flexible capacity—a resource so significant that participating households deserve to be rewarded.

"Millions of homes have chosen to turn on Energy Shift, showing that putting customers first can unlock residential VPPs at the gigawatt scale," said Steven Lanzisera, Chief Technology Officer at Renew Home. "We've rigorously evaluated the performance of Energy Shift, and we've shown that smaller, more comfortable thermostat adjustments add up to real capacity visible in system load curves right now. This is a resource available to deliver, already lowering costs, and ready to be rewarded by the providers who need flexible capacity."

Renew Home joins peers across the VPP ecosystem, urging the industry to align on a shared standard: recognition of residential flexibility as a core capacity asset —and to ensure that households are rewarded for the value their choices deliver to the grid.

The full report, "Scaling Residential Demand Response by Prioritizing Comfort: Evidence from 25 Million Energy Shifts" is available now at renewhome.com.

About Renew Home 

Renew Home brings households and energy providers together to help households save energy and earn rewards while offering energy providers cost-effective, reliable grid capacity at scale. With its home energy management platform, the Renew Home VPP empowers millions of households to save and shift their energy use to times when it's cleaner, less expensive or better for the grid. Renew Home VPP is building the country's largest virtual power plant solution with more than 5 million connected households. Renew Home is a Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners (SIP) company. Learn more at www.renewhome.com.

Press Contact:
Kat Madariaga

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¹  Renew Home, founded in April 2024, was spun out of Google. Renew Home operates Google Nest thermostat energy services, including Nest Renew and Rush Hour Rewards, on behalf of Google. Google, Google Home, Nest, Nest Renew, Nest Thermostat, Nest Learning Thermostat, Rush Hour Rewards, and the Google and Nest logos are trademarks of Google LLC.

²  Estimate based on a summer 2025 cooling season analysis of Nest Renew California TOU users that compared air conditioning runtime of TOU vs non-TOU users in the same postal code, assumed a 2.5 kW system size, a weighted average of common California TOU rates, and an average of 1.2 thermostats per household. The average cooling season savings estimate was $38.71.

SOURCE Renew Home