Author: Tom Mills

Every day brings news of how power grids are being overwhelmed by AI-driven electricity needs.  With electric prices rising sharply in response, as utilities struggle to build new capacity — nearly all of it, years to decades away.

With U.S. electric demand forecast to rise an astounding 25% by 2030, this is an accelerating crisis for consumers and businesses alike.

That’s why, in California Energy Commission-funded demonstrations, we’re excited now to be delivering new flexible Virtual Power Plant capacity that can be added to any building type — commercial office, retail, industrial, multi-family residential, single family home.

ANY building.  To free up electric demand instantly, for rising power grid needs worldwide.

And with next-generation OpenADR 3.0 day-ahead adjustment for both pricing and weather.  More to follow!

We just spent an exhilarating three days last week at DOE-Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as a selectee for Phase 2 of DOE’s intensive IMPEL market acceleration program.  Terrific advice from Silicon Valley executives and venture professionals, at arguably the birthplace of the Manhattan  Project — and indisputably the birthplace of OpenADR, the global standards for Demand Response and Distributed Energy Resource management.

PACE AI’s fast, easy-deployment cost/carbon + smart grid value continues to be recognized!

With our new, patented AI/ML that can turn any building into a virtual power plant, we’re very pleased to be named as 2025 finalists in The Clean Fight New York‘s Multi-Family LMI and Affordable Housing program.  TCFNY, which is funded by both New York State and corporate partners and the U.S. Department of Energy, is aimed at accelerating delivery of climate and clean energy solutions for all New Yorkers.

We’re terrifically proud to be named a global Proptech Top 4 finalist in the 2024 Leading Cities QBE AcceliCITY Resilience Challenge!

With the converging pain points of power grid overload and rising prices, climate change, and office and retail struggles  — and at the same time, rising needs for carbon and climate action and disclosure — PACE AI answers all of these with 1 easy, global carbon- and cost-cutting solution.

We’re psyched to join Cohort 6 of DOE’s IMPEL market accelerator.  IMPEL has helped to launch many great smart energy and building solutions.

We’ll be focusing on expanding our AI/ML solutions in Smart Home, leveraging our ongoing work with our great DOE-Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory team.  Work starts next month, looking forward to it!

NYSERDA is New York State’s energy agency, and a longtime pioneer in advancing new solutions in energy and smart grid.

So we and our great team are happy to have just been chosen as finalists for NYSERDA’s 2024 NextGen Buildings Innovation competition, with up to $8 million in grant awards.

Our proposed program will build on our 2024 work at  DOE-Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in demonstrating our new AI/ML for DER control and microgrid operations in projects across New York, and in a wide range of building types.

We’re excited to be launching our breakthrough new Efficiency as a Service and Virtual Power Plant feature sets.  And just in time, as another brutally hot summer arrives.

For this, we’re doing a big scaleup of our platforms — and our cloud partner Amazon Web Services is helping us to move fast, via the AWS Migration Acceleration Program.

AWS is not only working closely with us on our buildout, but also via making an investment with us via MAP to speed us to market.  Many thanks to our AWS partner team!

We’re thrilled (though not surprised!) at recent results in demonstrations of our new AI/ML at DOE-Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, under our CalTestBed grant from the California Energy Commission.

Our new AI/ML delivers easy, reliable load shed and shift, for fast-scalable grid Demand Response and virtual power plant  ops for buildings of all kinds — commercial, industrial, and soon residential.  And on a SEER 20 heat pump-equipped test building at DOE-LBNL’s great FLEXLAB facility, we did just that, showing 42% average kW demand reduction through the California winter morning peak, with zero comfort (temperature) impact inside the building.

And we can do the same for afternoon peak demand as well, across North America and the world.  More to come!

Thanks much to the Exelon Foundation, for selecting us as a Finalist in Exelon’s Climate Change Investment Initiative (2c2i) competition!

We’re looking forward to working in all of Exelon’s service territories this summer, with our new load shed AI/ML and our proven, rebated (30%-100% of project cost) energy efficiency savings, guaranteed.