Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) today (March 24) announced the launch of Seasonal Aggregation of Versatile Energy (SAVE), an Electric Program Investment Charge (EPIC) demonstration and a first-of-its-kind virtual power plant (VPP) that harnesses residential distributed energy resources to reduce local grid constraints.
Working with multiple aggregators and the Demand Side Analytics research team, the demonstration program will include up to 1,500 electric residential customers with battery energy storage systems and up to 400 customers with smart electric panels. The VPP will be dispatched for up to 100 hours from June through October 2025, providing localized support by supplying battery power and load flexibility to selected neighborhoods during local peak demand periods when electric substations and feeder lines approach capacity limits.
"Virtual power plants play a significant role in California's clean energy future and we're proud of our customers who are leading the charge with their clean energy adoption. Every day, we're looking at new and better ways to deliver for our hometowns while ensuring safety, reliability and resiliency for our customers," said Patti Poppe, CEO of PG&E Corporation.
SAVE is a demonstration VPP in which PG&E provides participating aggregators, including Sunrun and SPAN, with week-ahead hourly signals informed by grid needs. These hourly signals indicate PG&E's energy capacity needs at a specific day, time, and duration, to allow aggregators to shift participating customers' usage to meet those needs. This innovative VPP will employ newly developed software from Tesla and SPAN to meet these needs.
The neighborhoods in which SAVE will be activated are spread across PG&E's service area, with a concentration of assets in the South Bay Area and the Central Valley. Factors influencing where SAVE is deployed include areas where there is potential for overloading during peak summer hours, where the participating aggregators have a concentration of customers, and where PG&E has determined it can test capabilities across diversified grid needs (varying load shapes). Additionally, SAVE has an explicit eye towards equity, with more than half (60%) of SAVE customers in disadvantaged or low-income communities.
SAVE is being conducted through PG&E's EPIC program, which enables California investor-owned utilities to demonstrate new technologies and evaluate how they support safety, reliability, and affordability objectives for the benefit of all California electric customers. Funding for the SAVE program is provided through EPIC 4.09B Aggregated Customers on Distribution Circuits (ACDC).
Sunrun Participation
Sunrun solar-plus-storage systems at customers' homes in Northern and Central California will deliver targeted load relief to neighborhoods identified with highly constrained electric grids.
Sunrun will be responsible for managing battery dispatches, and all enrolled batteries will retain at least 20% backup reserve to ensure power availability at customers' homes in the event of a power outage.
"Customers with home batteries are a solution to alleviating strain on our electric grid," said Sunrun CEO Mary Powell. "We're experiencing a fundamental shift as homes are no longer just energy consumers. With storage and solar, they become powerful grid assets, delivering affordable, reliable power exactly when and where it's needed for communities and across the grid."
Sunrun will use an advanced application of Tesla's grid services platform to optimize Powerwall batteries to provide an exact amount of power at specific times to different locations. Similarly, Sunrun will leverage Lunar Energy's artificial intelligence-enabled forecasting through its Gridshare software platform to precisely dispatch various non-Tesla battery types to meet local grid needs.
SPAN Participation
SPAN will enroll customers with smart electric panels at homes in Northern and Central California to receive dispatch signals and deliver targeted load relief.
SPAN will use its Dynamic Service Rating (DSR) capability to shape home energy demand during peak events, ensuring that aggregate energy usage remains within operational limits of PG&E's distribution infrastructure. SPAN customers can use their SPAN Home® App to adjust their preferences to reflect how the SPAN® Panel will manage appliances. As a result, SPAN customers have maximum flexibility to continue using the appliances they need most during peak hours while helping alleviate grid congestion.
"We are excited to participate in the SAVE program with PG&E to show how SPAN homes can contribute to grid resilience and increase the utilization of our existing infrastructure without sacrificing individual comfort," said Arch Rao, founder and CEO of SPAN. "We are uniquely positioned to engage households as partners in grid stability, transforming load growth from a challenge to manage into an asset that benefits all."
To learn more about PG&E's EPIC program and its various projects, visit www.pge.com/epic.
About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE: PCG), is a combined natural gas and electric utility serving more than sixteen million people across 70,000 square miles in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit pge.com and pge.com/news
