Google is buying a much larger share of its capacity in the PJM Interconnection region from homes and businesses that agree to cut their electricity use when the grid is under stress. On Oct. 22, 2026, Google and Voltus, a distributed energy company, announced an expanded "Bring Your Own Capacity" (BYOC) agreement to build what both companies call a 1-gigawatt virtual power plant (VPP) across PJM. According to the Voltus press release, the announcement includes an additional 1,070 MW of capacity, following the 100 MW the two companies agreed to in June 2026.

Google's announcement on its own blog calls the expansion 10-fold. Both companies describe the deal as "one of the largest known distributed capacity portfolios deployed by a hyperscaler to date." That description comes from the two parties to the contract. Voltus is the counterparty, so its release is a first-hand account of the deal but not an independent one. The sources do not reconcile the figures: 100 MW plus an additional 1,070 MW would be 1,170 MW, while both companies describe the resulting VPP as 1 GW.

What Google Is Buying

A virtual power plant does not generate electricity. It pools many small, flexible loads and resources so that a grid operator can treat them as a single resource. Google's blog post says Voltus combines flexible capacity from local businesses and homes, including smart thermostats, batteries and industrial equipment, into a VPP that Google pays for. When demand peaks, those assets temporarily reduce their energy use to support grid reliability.

The Voltus release says the company signals participating sites when the grid is under strain, and that those sites can use batteries, smart thermostats, industrial process adjustments and other flexible assets to reduce energy use. Voltus then delivers financial benefits such as bill savings and direct payments to participating customers. Google's post says participants get direct economic benefits, including bill savings and cash payments.

Utility Dive described the structure of the original June deal in an Oct. 19 analysis. In that three-year, 100-MW VPP, Google pays residential, commercial and industrial customers in PJM to participate, and the contract makes Voltus responsible for Google's capacity obligation, according to Voltus officials quoted by the outlet.

Term and Scope: What Is Public

The two companies' announcements leave out several commercial details. The Google blog post does not give the 1,070-MW figure, the contract term or an end date. The exact megawatt figure appears in the Voltus release, which does not state a term either.

Latitude Media reported that Voltus CEO Dana Guernsey confirmed Google has signed a contract running through 2040, and that it will offset load from multiple Google data centers in PJM. The publication said the deal's specifics have not been made public. It also quoted Guernsey on the contrast with the first agreement: "why is it only three years?" was among the questions raised about that phase-one deal.

Latitude Media reported that Guernsey said the summer 100-MW VPP "has already been fulfilled" and was "over-subscribed." On the makeup of the new portfolio, Guernsey told the outlet that batteries, especially behind-the-meter commercial and industrial (C&I) systems, will be "a chunk" of it, and she declined to say how much. Neither company has published a breakdown by resource type or by state.

Google's blog post says PJM serves 67 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C.; the Voltus release says 67 million customers. Neither announcement says which Google data centers the capacity is tied to.

What the Parties Said

Ellen Zuckerman, Google's head of energy market development for North and South America, is quoted in the Voltus release: "Expanding our initial commitment tenfold demonstrates our core effort to actively bring our own capacity to the grids that serve us." Guernsey said in the same release that the partnership brings clean capacity online "at gigawatt scale."

Voltus COO Tim Hade, speaking onstage at Latitude Media's Flex Summit earlier in October, said "we can build distributed capacity faster than we can build centralized capacity in the United States today." Latitude Media quoted him saying the industry has to prove over the next three, four or five years that it can operate at 10-, 15- or 20-gigawatt levels. The outlet also noted that most VPP deployments so far have been on the order of hundreds of megawatts.

Utility Dive's analysis, published three days before the expansion was announced, quoted Jon Wellinghoff, Voltus' chief regulatory officer and a former chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, on the June deal: "This is a turning point." The same piece includes comments on distributed capacity from Lon Huber of Xcel Energy and Pier LaFarge of Sparkfund.

The PJM Backdrop

The deal arrives during a period of strain in PJM. Utility Dive reported that PJM set a record peak load of 168.2 GW on July 2, noted that the Google VPP's 100 MW is small by comparison, and reported record-high capacity prices in the region. It also cited a 2025 Department of Energy study that found distributed resources could meet as much as 20% of U.S. peak load by 2030.

The Voltus release cites a Brattle Group report that predicts U.S. consumers could save more than $100 billion over the next decade through better grid utilization. That estimate is Brattle's, as cited by Voltus. It is not a projection of savings from this agreement.

For data center developers and the utilities that serve them, the arrangement shows one way a large load can address its capacity obligation without waiting for new centralized generation. It relies on paying existing customers in the same market to be flexible. The sources do not say how the VPP's performance will be measured or verified for PJM's purposes beyond Voltus taking on Google's obligation, as Utility Dive describes for the June deal.

Voltus' Wider Push

The expansion follows several other Voltus announcements this year. The company's release links to an Oct. 8 announcement of a $225 million raise, in which Voltus said it expects to scale to 20 GW by 2030. Latitude Media identifies that raise as a Series D and notes that Voltus acquired energy storage startup Brightfield; Voltus' own release list dates the Brightfield acquisition to June 10. A separate Aug. 17 Voltus release concerned Sunrun supplying capacity for Voltus' hyperscaler agreements.

Key Figures at a Glance

  • Initial agreement (June 2026): 100 MW, three years. Voltus took on Google's capacity obligation (Utility Dive; Voltus release).
  • Expansion (Oct. 22, 2026): an additional 1,070 MW, described by both companies as a 1-GW VPP (Voltus release; Google blog).
  • Term: through 2040, offsetting load from multiple Google data centers in PJM, as confirmed by Voltus CEO Dana Guernsey (Latitude Media). The Google blog post does not state the term.
  • Status of first phase: fulfilled and "over-subscribed," according to Guernsey (Latitude Media).
  • PJM record peak: 168.2 GW on July 2 (Utility Dive).

What Happens Next

None of the sources names a regulatory filing, hearing, docket deadline or dated enrollment milestone for the expanded agreement. The contract's specifics have not been made public, according to Latitude Media. On the record, the deal's long-term frame is a contract that Guernsey says runs through 2040. Separately, Hade has said the industry must prove 10 to 20 GW of scale over the next three to five years (Latitude Media), and Voltus expects to reach 20 GW by 2030 (Voltus' Oct. 8 announcement). DataCenterFeed will report scheduled milestones when either company or PJM puts them on the record.

Sources