Dive Brief:
- Sonoma Clean Power is launching an effort to install smart thermostats for up to 1,000 income-qualified customers at no upfront cost, the northern California public power utility said last week.
- The thermostat deployment is part of a broader effort to expand a multi-resource virtual power plant that includes thousands of electric vehicle chargers, battery storage systems, heat pump water heaters, and smart electrical panels, SCP said in November. The California Energy Commission provided a $4.99 million grant for the project and SCP will kick in $1 million of its own funds.
- The grant and match will also underwrite the deployment of 40 smart panels and battery systems at multifamily properties to boost renter participation and invest $250,000 in partnerships with community organizations to support multilingual outreach and enrollment efforts, SCP said. The grant funding runs through the first quarter of 2029.
Dive Insight:
Felicia Smith, SCP’s director of customer energy solutions, told Utility Dive that the VPP builds on a behavioral demand response program with about 12,500 participants. SCP serves about 500,000 customers across two counties north of San Francisco.
The behavioral program is “designed to be incredibly accessible, with no tech needed,” which has paid off in “a really high response rate,” Smith said. In 2025, 92% of participants responded to day-ahead phone and email alerts about upcoming energy events by modifying their electricity consumption, she said.
The CEC grant and SCP match will help the utility increase the number of smart devices participating in automated demand response, particularly among lower-income and otherwise disadvantaged customers who currently have lower participation rates, Smith said. SCP has about 37,000 customers who meet the income qualification requirements for no-cost smart thermostat installation, though not all of them have central air conditioning, she added.
Smith said SCP estimates the combined value of the free smart thermostat and installation labor at about $400 per customer.
SCP is also pushing to expand SCP Rewards, its voluntary bring-your-own-device offering for customers who have or plan to install smart thermostats. Participating customers get $200 for enrolling a thermostat and $5 in bill credits each month they remain in the program, according to the program page.
SCP can’t tell exactly how many of its customers have smart thermostats that aren’t yet enrolled in SCP Rewards, but its share is likely higher than the national average thanks to a relatively affluent customer base with “tech propensity,” Smith said.
But SCP still has many customers without smart thermostats, and well over 5% of its customers qualify for discounted electricity through California’s CARE and FERA programs. Smith said the CEC funding is a critical equity tool for SCP.
“We are really focused on low-income customers, and that is strategic because these homes have high bill burdens,” Smith said. The partnerships that SCP is building with community organizations will help because those groups have more credibility than the utility, she added.
“If our customers hear about [automated demand response] from a nonprofit they know, we think they might be more inclined to sign up for it … and this helps us strengthen our relationship with our customers in a way that’s comfortable for them,” she said.
Smith said SCP’s VPP has the potential to reduce its wholesale power costs and reduce the need for new distribution system investments as it scales.
But the near-term priority is to “get people comfortable with the idea that we may need to be more interactive with the grid,” she said.
