AI Thermostats Pitched for Texas Homes to Relieve Stressed Grid

Three of the biggest names in US home energy automation are coming together to offer some relief to the beleaguered Texas electrical grid.

Power supplier NRG Energy Inc. is partnering with Renew Home LLC to distribute about 650,000 artificial intelligence-enabled thermostats that use Alphabet Inc.’s Google Cloud technology over the next decade. The initiative, announced Thursday, aims to shave nearly 1 gigawatt of electricity demand — enough to power 200,000 Texas homes or about 1% of the record summer demand seen this year on the state grid.

“The entire industry has been built to serve the peak load on the hottest day of the year,” said Rasesh Patel, president of NRG’s consumer unit. “This allows us to be a lot more smarter about demand in shaving the peak.”

Enrollment in the program, where consumers see cost savings or other incentives for curtailing energy usage, opens in the spring. NRG residential customers will receive service installation of a Vivint doorbell camera and either a Vivint or Google Nest thermostat for free.

NRG expects to sign up enough homes to free up 300 megawatts of electricity demand within the first two years, according to Patel. That is expected to climb to 650 megawatts by 2030, before reaching its 1 gigawatt goal by 2035. Patel said pooling together homes costs $100 per kilowatt — about a tenth the cost of building a typical natural gas-fueled power plant. That would put the program cost at about $100 million.

Google Cloud will be tapped for its AI and machine learning to determine the best time to cool or heat homes, based on a household’s energy usage patterns and ambient temperatures. Renew Home Chief Executive Officer Ben Brown said in the interview that the platform will expand beyond the thermostat and large appliances to managing battery storage and electric vehicles. Renew Home was formed in part from energy services unit of the Nest thermostat.