When heat waves hit, millions of air conditioners can turn on at the same time, straining the electric grid and raising both the risk of outages and the cost of electricity for households. To help ease that pressure during peak demand, power companies often ask customers to reduce or shift electricity use when demand is highest, including by setting thermostats higher or conserving. Now, a renter-friendly pilot in New York City is testing a different approach: plug-in batteries that can run window air conditioners offline during the hours when the grid faces the most stress.
The pilot is designed for residents who typically cannot install rooftop solar or other home energy upgrades. Every Electric, the company behind the program, has partnered with Con Edison for the New York City test, which it said is expanding to more than 1,000 homes this summer. Participants can receive cash rebates for taking part.
“It’s basically a souped up version of the power bank that you would use to charge your phone when you go out,” said Andrew Wang, the chief executive officer of Every Electric, describing the concept. The devices, about the size of a microwave, charge when electricity demand is low and then run window air conditioners for a few hours when demand spikes.
The program operates within Con Edison’s demand-response framework, through which customers are paid to reduce or shift electricity use to support the grid. Every Electric’s system is one example of a broader trend toward coordinating many smaller, distributed energy resources—what experts call “virtual power plants”—so that aggregated capacity can help manage peak periods without building additional generation.
Utility and government officials have increasingly looked for ways to manage rising demand as heat waves become more frequent and intense. In the background, Kevin Brehm, a manager at RMI, a nonprofit that researches energy systems and the transition to clean power, said utilities often respond to peak demand by turning to backup power plants that run less often and can be less efficient and more polluting. He said the resulting costs can be passed on to consumers over time.
“There’s a question of emissions, and then there’s also a really important question around affordability,” Brehm said. He also said strategies that rely on residents to conserve—such as setting higher rates during peak hours or asking households to limit usage—can be difficult to rely on because utilities may not know how people will behave during extreme weather. Solutions like Every Electric’s, he said, can help take pressure off the grid while giving participants a way to keep their homes cool.
Every Electric said its plug-in batteries work specifically with window air conditioning units and do not export power back to the grid. Instead, the devices reduce demand by using stored battery power during peak periods. The company said participants can earn money roughly equivalent to the cost of a July electric bill, and Bianca Pasternack, a New York City renter enrolled in the program, said she received a $100 gift card at the end of the season.
Pasternack said the option felt accessible compared with other programs that require solar installations. “I can’t put solar panels on my roof,” she said. “This is at least something that’s accessible and easy. It was very set-it-and-forget-it.”
The pilot’s technology is intended to be largely automated. The battery plugs into the air-conditioning unit and then into a wall outlet, and it connects to a smartphone app that detects when demand is low so the battery charges during off-peak hours. During peak times—usually from 1 to 4 p.m. or 4 to 8 p.m. during the hottest months—the battery powers the air conditioner while demand is highest.
The company said the program is scaling up from about 200 kilowatts of flexible capacity last year to roughly 2 megawatts this summer, and could expand further. By comparison, Every Electric said California’s virtual power plant effort exceeds 200 megawatts. Wang said the company is looking to expand the approach to other cities, and Brehm said systems like this could meaningfully reduce grid strain if they reach enough households.
“It’s a matter of how we’re able to get to that scale,” Brehm said, noting that adoption depends on how easily the technology can be deployed and integrated into the grid. He added that, for participants, the installation process is designed to be straightforward, saying it is “plug-and-play” and that “you don’t need a ton of permissions.”