Sunrun, Tesla, and Renew Home announced an agreement to aggregate more than 16 gigawatts of home batteries and devices into the largest distributed power plant in the US. The project targets surging electricity demand from data centers. Sunrun shares rose as much as 26 percent following the announcement.
The companies said the framework pools dispatchable capacity from hundreds of thousands of home battery systems operated by Sunrun and Tesla, along with flexible capacity from more than 8 million smart thermostats managed by Renew Home. They described it as a capacity-as-a-solution that requires no additional hardware, software, interconnection, water, or land usage and can be activated in months rather than years.
More than 300 megawatts of capacity is already ready for deployment in Virginia, with plans to reach at least 500 megawatts by 2030. The partners have also committed capacity to PJM’s proposed Reliability Backstop Process, which they said could unlock over a gigawatt if accepted.
Sunrun CEO Mary Powell said the grid of the 1800s cannot power the innovation of 2026. Renew Home CEO Ben Brown and Tesla senior director Colby Hastings also highlighted the role of existing home assets in meeting hyperscaler needs without new infrastructure.