Smart thermostats that make small, automatic temperature adjustments throughout the day are quietly cutting household energy use, lowering bills, and reducing strain on the power grid, especially during peak demand. Programs like Renew Home’s Energy Shift let customers opt in to background control that shifts cooling and heating away from expensive peak hours, often without people noticing changes in comfort. In Arizona, Salt River Project found that tens of thousands of these devices collectively provided about 27 megawatts of peak load reduction, nearly matching the performance of its traditional demand-response thermostat program while operating largely in the background.
These “background virtual power plants” are emerging across multiple regions, from Arizona to the Southeast and PJM territory, where they have delivered tens to hundreds of megawatts of flexible capacity during extreme weather and high-demand events. Because they reduce the need for new power plants and grid infrastructure, utilities see them as a potentially very cost-effective way to manage rising peak demand and, over time, help keep rates lower for all customers while integrating more clean energy.
