Sunrun shares surged over 30% on June 24 after the residential solar company announced a partnership with Tesla and Renew Home to supply power for data centers and utilities. The three companies plan to deliver over 16 GW of flexible, dispatchable energy capacity sourced entirely from residential assets. Sunrun and Tesla are contributing their installed base of home batteries and solar systems, while Renew Home brings over 8 million smart thermostats and connected devices. Combined, the companies say this constitutes the largest distributed or virtual power plant in the United States. Roughly 300 MW is available immediately in Virginia, with plans to scale that to 500 MW by 2030. In Texas, about 1.7 GW is already accessible, representing enough power to meet the peak demand of approximately 17 large data centers. No new hardware or software is required for the companies buying this power. The initiative builds on earlier collaborative efforts between Sunrun and Tesla, particularly in Texas VPP programs, where customers with a Tesla Powerwall can receive $400 in annual payments for letting their battery be tapped during peak demand events. The companies claim the initiative could be 16 times larger than California’s current VPP programs on a nationwide basis.