THE GRID
Google Just Paid Strangers to Turn Off Their AC — So Its Data Centers Can Stay On
Last Monday, a press release hit my inbox that most people skipped. Google signed a deal with a firm called Voltus. The price tag looked small. The idea behind it is not.
Google is now paying homes and small firms to use less power. In return, it gets to run its data centers on the freed-up grid space.
It sounds odd. The world's second-largest company... asking your neighbor to dial back the AC.
But read the fine print and it makes sense. The deal sits inside PJM — the grid that runs 13 states and D.C. PJM is the biggest power market in the U.S.
And it's under huge stress.
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Voltus will group smart thermostats, home batteries, and EVs into one "virtual power plant." Up to 100 megawatts a year. That's enough for about 75,000 homes.
Google funds the whole thing.
Why now? PJM's last capacity auction hit the price cap — $333 per megawatt-day. Data centers drove roughly 45% of the $47.2 billion in costs from PJM's last three auctions.
The old playbook — just build more plants — is too slow. A new gas plant takes four to six years. A virtual power plant can spin up in months.
"Our country is at an inflection point. The demand for electricity is increasing unlike anything we've seen in generations."
Google calls this "Bring Your Own Capacity." No one else in Big Tech has done it yet — not Meta, not Microsoft, not Amazon.
If it works, expect all of them to copy it fast.
A study from Duke found something wild. If data centers agreed to cut demand for just 40 hours a year, about 100 gigawatts of new capacity could come online. No new plants. No new wires.
Texas is already moving this way. A new state law now forces large power users to switch to backup or cut demand in grid emergencies.
I've been tracking the power grid for years. The old model was simple: build a plant, sell the watts. That model is dying.
The new model is more like a swap. You give up your watts. A tech giant pays you for them. The grid stays whole.
Power is no longer just a supply story. It's a demand game now. And Google just made the first real move.
VOLTAGE
$1.3 Trillion — That's What It Costs to Keep the Lights On
S&P Global put out a number in April that still rattles me. U.S. utilities will spend close to $1.3 trillion on capital from 2026 to 2030.
Trillion. With a T.
Most of it goes to one thing: keeping up with data centers.
That's a 3x jump in five years. Right now, over 4,500 data centers eat 176 terawatt-hours a year. That's 4.4% of all U.S. power.
And 700 more sites are being built across 38 states.
Where does the money go? New gas plants. New transmission lines. Grid upgrades in places like Virginia and Texas that can't keep up.
The biggest bet so far: NextEra's $67 billion deal to buy Dominion. That merger would create the world's largest utility.
Their combined backlog? 130 gigawatts. Enough to power 100 million homes. NextEra has lined up 20 potential data center campuses across the country, with a goal of 40 by year's end.
NEE ▼ 5% on deal news
D ▲ 9% on deal news
Wall Street punished NextEra's stock on the premium it paid. Dominion jumped 9%. The market sees risk. Ketchum sees scale.
He told Fortune that hyperscalers need a power partner that can grow as fast as they do. A single data center campus can need 1 gigawatt — enough to power 750,000 homes. Some want to grow to 5 gigawatts.
He's not thinking about this quarter. He's thinking about 2030 — when every part of the country will need more power than it has.
Year-to-date, utilities have lagged the broader market, trailing sectors like energy and information technology. But the money is flowing where the watts are.
The grid buildout is the biggest capital cycle in a generation. $1.3 trillion says so.
WIRED IN
Signals From the Grid
Quanta Services (PWR) posted a total backlog of $48.5 billion — an all-time high. The company raised full-year revenue guidance to $34.7–$35.2 billion and is now building the transmission lines and electrical infrastructure connecting to hyperscale data centers.
T1 Energy (TE) agreed to buy KORE Power for $32 million, entering the battery storage market. KORE's NRI unit has built about 1,100 battery projects worldwide, and T1 expects the deal to generate $15–20 million in EBITDA in 2027.
Brookfield and La Caisse are taking Boralex private in a C$9 billion deal. Boralex runs wind and solar farms across four countries, and the buyers want to sell clean power to large corporate energy users.
Eaton (ETN) posted a record Q1 — $7.5 billion in sales, up 17% year over year. The firm makes power gear for data centers, utilities, and factories — and right now, all three are buying.
