Participated · Series D · Jun 2022

Renew Home combines Google Nest Renew and OhmConnect to offer load-shifting services that shift household energy use to off-peak or cleaner-grid times via smart thermostats and other devices. The offering today builds on Nest Renew functionality and OhmConnect’s platform, which has about 225,000 customers across thermostat brands and other devices; Google has not disclosed how many Nest devices use Nest Renew. OhmConnect is active in California, Texas and New York, and Renew Home plans to expand into new markets post-launch. The company intends to broaden beyond thermostat-based load shifting into whole-home energy management, including EV charging, solar systems, additional hardware partnerships and more nuanced energy-management software. Renew Home has set targets of accounting for 30 GW of shiftable load and serving 10 million homes by 2030. Financially, Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners is providing a $100 million investment and will be the majority owner, while Google will remain a minority shareholder and is not investing in this transaction; no valuation was disclosed. OhmConnect operates a residential energy flexibility platform that rewards customers for smarter at-home electricity use. Led by CEO Cisco DeVries, the company helps hundreds of thousands of customers manage their electricity and pays them for saving power when the grid is stressed and likely to utilize dirtier generation. OhmConnect has paid more than $17 million in rewards to customers. Customers of Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison, San Diego Gas & Electric and Con Edison can sign up for free, and Texas residents can select OhmConnect as their retail electric provider. The company plans to use its new funding to integrate with dozens of technology and appliance companies, expand into new markets and support the build-out of several gigawatts of flexible electric load across the United States. OhmConnect operates a residential demand-response program that pays customers for reducing electricity use during peak events and sells the collective savings back to the grid. The company enables hundreds of thousands of customers to earn cash and prizes for timely, smarter home energy use and to reduce their utility bills and carbon footprint. An estimated 40% of OhmConnect customers are low-to-moderate income families, and the platform aims to enroll users in disadvantaged communities. OhmConnect says its community cut 1 GWh of energy during the August 2020 heat wave—equivalent to taking 600,000 homes off the grid for an hour—and users earned $1.3 million from the company for those efforts. Future plans tied to the new funding include expanding flexible demand capacity, increasing connections with grid-responsive smart devices, and maintaining reliable reductions during grid events. The company was founded in 2014 and operates from Oakland, Calif. OhmConnect operates a demand-response platform that aggregates residential energy reductions via push notifications and payouts to users, effectively creating a virtual power plant. The company has about 150,000 users on its platform and has paid out roughly $1 million to customers during recent California brownouts and blackouts. OhmConnect has demonstrated material grid impact, engaging customers to reduce almost one gigawatt-hour of usage during peak stress events. Leadership includes CEO Cisco DeVries and a CTO who previously served as Zynga’s CTO. The company is positioned to scale as part of Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners’ Resilia initiative and to expand rewards-based demand-response participation across California. OhmConnect’s future plans with partners include rolling out smart devices, expanding residential participation, and integrating into broader distributed and bi-directional grid architectures. OhmConnect is an energy sharing service that lets households and apartment communities know when to share energy and pays participants for taking part. The company is led by CEO Matt Duesterberg and is based in San Francisco, California. OhmConnect's community of 300,000 energy sharers generates over 100 megawatts, the equivalent of four peaker power plants. The service coordinates residential load reductions and compensates users for participation. OhmConnect plans to use new funding to expand into markets beyond California, including New York, Texas and the rest of the country. Following the Series B, reported total funding stands at $15M.