Three of the largest US energy storage and distributed energy resource companies have partnered to aggregate more than 16GW of residential energy capacity across the US for sale to hyperscalers and utilities.Sunrun, Renew Home, and Tesla have announced a deal that will see them draw on home battery systems, smart thermostats, and vehicle-to-grid devices already installed across the grid.According to the partners, the framework will require no new hardware, land, water, or interconnection infrastructure from offtaking parties, and claim that the new capacity could be deployed in months rather than years.The combined capacity will draw on hundreds of thousands of home battery systems operated by Sunrun and Tesla, alongside flexible demand from more than eight million smart thermostats managed by Renew Home. Forming what the companies call the largest distributed power plant in the country."The grid of the 1800s cannot power the innovation of 2026," said Sunrun CEO Mary Powell. "When data centers are asked to throttle down operations during the most expensive and stressful hours of the day, we can activate our distributed power plants to help provide them the power they need while also protecting American families from footing the bill for costly new infrastructure."Hyperscalers are being encouraged to engage immediately, with the companies stating available capacity will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis. In Virginia, the companies have said they have more than 300MW available for immediate deployment, rising to at least 500MW by 2030.The partners have also committed capacity to PJM's proposed Reliability Backstop Process. If accepted, the arrangement would unlock more than 1GW immediately, with additional capacity available in subsequent years for peak shaving, locational grid relief, and fast-responding ancillary services."The stakes are clear. America's grid faces mounting pressure from data centers, electrification, and manufacturing growth that no single infrastructure solution can solve fast enough," said Colby Hastings, senior director of residential energy at Tesla. "Sunrun, Renew Home, and Tesla believe that a huge piece of the answer is already in place, in the batteries, thermostats, and electric vehicles inside millions of American homes, waiting to be put to work."The utilization of distributed energy resources (DER) and virtual power plants (VPP) to free up capacity for data centers is growing in popularity. Earlier this month, Google signed a 100MW deal with VPP operator Voltus, under which Voltus will aggregate up to 100MW of power from batteries, smart thermostats, and other flexible assets from local businesses and homes into a Google-funded VPP.