Google and distributed-energy platform Voltus announced an expanded agreement on Thursday to build a 1-gigawatt virtual power plant in the PJM grid region, which serves 67 million people across 13 states and Washington, D.C. The deal adds 1,070 megawatts of flexible capacity to the 100-megawatt agreement the two companies signed in June, and the companies call it one of the largest distributed capacity portfolios deployed by a hyperscaler to date.

A virtual power plant aggregates capacity that already exists at homes and businesses — batteries, smart thermostats, cooling systems and industrial processes. When the grid is under strain, Voltus signals participating sites to reduce or shift their energy use, and participants receive bill savings and direct payments in return. Google funds the capacity as a way of bringing new supply to the grids its data centers draw from.

The announcement leans on a Brattle Group estimate that better grid utilization could save U.S. consumers more than $100 billion over the next decade. 'Expanding our initial commitment tenfold demonstrates our core effort to actively bring our own capacity to the grids that serve us,' said Ellen Zuckerman, Google's head of energy market development for the Americas. Voltus, which raised $225 million earlier this month and targets 20 GW of capacity by 2030, said the deal translates data center growth into direct economic benefits for homes and businesses.