Over the past year, our team at Rewiring America has been hard at work building the case that targeted upgrades to American households such as heat pumps, rooftop solar, battery storage and weatherization can lower household bills and free up grid capacity where and when it’s needed most.
We call this idea Homegrown Energy, and we unveiled our first report on its potential to fulfill growing energy demands during our New York City Climate Week 2025 panel with PG&E’s Carla Peterman and David Roberts of the Volts podcast. (That discussion later became a podcast episode, available here). As the idea of investing in household upgrades as a core part of energy infrastructure gained traction, we released our Homegrown Energy policy blueprint this spring, which lays out five pathways to make home upgrades affordable nationwide.
Now, I’m proud to announce that in partnership with our friends at PG&E, this idea has come to fruition. The SHARE initiative — which stands for Smart Home Assets for Reliability and Efficiency — is a PG&E program that will enroll thousands of customers in and around San Jose, California, into a virtual power plant network. The program will bring together existing smart devices such as batteries, smart thermostats and heat pump water heaters in order to unlock energy on the grid during times of peak demand. What sets this program apart is that it will be a first of its kind opportunity to invest directly in households to create capacity.
“What sets this program apart is that it will be a first of its kind opportunity to invest directly in households to create capacity.”
With support from our partners at Carrier and others, we’ll deploy upgrades including free- or low-cost battery-enabled heat pumps and whole-home batteries to nearly 500 additional eligible households — demonstrating how households can create needed capacity on the grid. This program would not be possible without funding support from Google, which will be covering the costs of the upgrades and program enrollment, ensuring no costs are passed on to ratepayers. And I’m grateful to our additional partners at Tesla, Sunrun, Renew Home, Olivine and Demand Side Analytics for their meaningful support for this initiative.
It’s important for us to take a moment to appreciate all of the work and collaboration that got us to this moment, and to express our appreciation for the partners leading the way in adopting the value of households as energy infrastructure. And we also recognize that all this effort has brought us to the starting line — now is the time when the real work begins. It’s incumbent on us to prove that smart, coordinated use of household upgrades can bring down rates and improve grid stability at scale.
We’re honored and excited to move forward with this opportunity, and are eager to test what a tailored Homegrown Energy approach can do to solve some of our near-term energy challenges. Whenever I speak with people about the idea of households moving from passive consumers to active producers of energy, I am struck by how inspired and excited they are about the idea. At a time when much of the news about our present-day energy and economic system is bleak, there’s power in having all of us work together toward a common goal.
I’m excited to keep pushing toward our goal to upgrade homes in every town, city and state, and watch the momentum grow stronger with every additional home and installation along the way.
Onward!
Learn more about the program at our press release and our program details.
