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PG&E, Rewiring America and Google Launch First-of-its-Kind Virtual Power Plant to Help Lower Costs for All Customers

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Initiative aims to deliver hundreds of deeply discounted home energy upgrades and enroll over 20,000 existing energy devices installed in customers’ homes

OAKLAND, Calif., Sept. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) today announced SHARE (Smart Home Assets for Reliability and Efficiency), a first-of-its-kind Virtual Power Plant (VPP) designed to help communities benefit from rising electric demand, while improving affordability and reliability for all customers.

Together, PG&E, Rewiring America, Google, Carrier Global Corporation, Tesla, Sunrun, Renew Home, Demand Side Analytics, encoord and other partners will deploy the new VPP—a coordinated network of home batteries, smart devices, and battery-enabled heat pumps that reduce energy use during periods of high demand—in Bay Area communities.

The model is designed to create additional capacity, support reliability and help put downward pressure on rates while participating households save money through smarter energy management with next-generation home technology. SHARE is a first-of-its-kind VPP proof-of-concept that combines enrollment of existing home energy devices with regional deployment of privately funded new electrification technologies to address growing electric demand.

“This is about delivering power at the speed our economy demands—while improving affordability and reliability for the people we serve,” said Chelle Izzi, Chief Commercial Officer, PG&E. “SHARE shows how investing in customers can unlock grid capacity, support growth, and bring real benefits back to communities.”

A New Approach to Meeting Rising Demand
Electric demand is rising across the country as more businesses, vehicles, homes and buildings rely on electricity. PG&E continues to aggressively build and modernize the electric system to meet long-term growth, including needed transmission and distribution investments.

SHARE adds a complementary, near-term pathway: investing directly in homes located where energy demand is growing. This proof-of-concept VPP is designed to demonstrate how targeted investments in homes can help: 

Improve reliability and lower costs by making better use of everyday, flexible home energy resources alongside continued grid investmentExpand capacity during periods of high demandSupport new and growing energy users more quickly

PG&E is working with Tesla, Sunrun, and Renew Home to enroll nearly 21,000 existing flexible energy devices into the program. This will allow participating households to gain new ways to manage their energy costs and earn rewards for the smart features they already use, while shifting demand during peak periods helping make better use of existing infrastructure, benefiting customers across the region. The resource is expected to begin supporting the grid as early as fall 2026.

“Home energy devices hold enormous, untapped capacity that can meaningfully improve affordability and reliability for all Californians,” said Mary Powell, CEO of Sunrun. “This initiative unlocks that potential while giving customers an opportunity to share in the economic benefits of helping improve their local grid.”

Carrier is the initiative’s launch partner for the new deployments, providing its battery-enabled heat pump solution, including the Carrier Performance™ Series Variable-Speed Heat Pump with EnerSync™, that automatically stores and shifts energy use to help lower costs for customers, maintain comfort, and support grid reliability during periods of peak demand.

“As energy demand grows, SHARE demonstrates how Carrier can help deliver distributed capacity with the firmness to scale as a fast and reliable grid resource,” said Hakan Yilmaz, President, Carrier Energy & Chief Sustainability Officer. “Carrier’s battery-enabled HVAC technology brings together our trusted comfort, market presence and dealer scale to help deliver homeowner value and reliable grid flexibility.”

Eligible customers in Santa Clara and Alameda counties will have the opportunity to receive:

New Carrier high-efficiency, battery-enabled heat pumpsLower monthly energy bills through smarter energy managementGreater comfort and improved home resilience

All told, these resources will be orchestrated into a distributed power plant by PG&E and Demand Side Analytics with the goal of unlocking additional capacity on the regional electric transmission system.

Designed to Protect Customers
SHARE reflects a shared commitment to responsible energy growth and is structured so that existing customers benefit from growing grid capacity needs. The program will be fully funded by Google to support customer incentives, technology deployment, and program delivery.

“As demand scales, our current electricity grid can bridge the gap—if we optimize it correctly,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, Global Head of Energy & Power at Google. “This program unlocks the potential of local distributed energy resources to strengthen grid capacity and resiliency while delivering meaningful benefits for local communities.”

Rewiring America will work directly with households to deploy and enroll energy-saving electric technologies into SHARE that can serve as flexible grid resources while improving the customer experience. They will also work closely with local installers to ensure projects meet high quality and performance standards.

“This initiative shows how households can be part of the energy solution,” said Ari Matusiak, Founder and CEO of Rewiring America. “By helping families upgrade their homes with efficient electric technologies, we can lower costs, improve comfort, and optimize California’s grid capacity at the same time.”

PG&E will lead planning, analysis, and validation to evaluate customer impacts, system performance and long-term benefits.

A Model for California—and Beyond
SHARE represents a new way for utilities, customers and technology partners to work together to help meet electricity growth reliably and affordably through smarter utilization of the grid. This location-based approach is designed to inform future solutions for transmission constraints, local capacity challenges and rising demand across the electric system.

Over time, the proof of concept could expand beyond residential customers to include commercial, industrial, and utility-scale applications—supporting economic growth, improving grid utilization and lowering emissions.

PG&E and Rewiring America will begin reaching out to eligible customers starting fall 2026. SHARE is expected to run through 2027, with initial findings from the program expected to be shared in late 2026 or early 2027.

To learn more and explore program eligibility, visit https://energyshare.rewiringamerica.org/

About PG&E
Pacific Gas and Electric Company, a subsidiary of PG&E Corporation (NYSE: PCG), is a combined natural gas and electric utility serving more than sixteen million people across 70,000 square miles in Northern and Central California. For more information, visit pge.compge.com/news, and pge.com/innovation.     

About Google
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. Through products and platforms like Search, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google Play, Google Cloud, Chrome, and YouTube, Google plays a meaningful role in the daily lives of billions of people and has become one of the most widely-known companies in the world. Google is a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.

About Rewiring America 
Rewiring America puts American households at the center of an affordable, resilient, all-electric future. We partner with policymakers, industry leaders, manufacturers, workers, and communities to strengthen the electric grid, lower energy prices, and build Homegrown Energy solutions for all.

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SOURCE Pacific Gas and Electric Company

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ThreatLocker Highlights Key Cyber Threat Activity and Research from August 2026

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Recap includes AI agent security, ClickFix attacks, exposed infrastructure, zero-day research, and company momentum

ORLANDO, Fla., Sept. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — ThreatLocker today released highlights of the company’s cybersecurity research and company news from August.

“Everyone was talking about AI in August, but the incidents we analyzed reinforced that most security problems still follow familiar paths,” said Danny Jenkins, CEO & Co-founder of ThreatLocker. “The attacks we looked at were caused by trusted access, regardless of whether AI was involved.”

Basic Controls Are Still Most Important

The month’s incidents showed why basic cybersecurity controls cannot be treated as a secondary problem to AI. Attacks targeting water systems showed how exposed infrastructure default credentials still create serious risk.

ThreatLocker also examined why ClickFix is so effective against security-aware users. ClickFix does not just rely on a user trusting the wrong prompt. It also depends on trusted system tools, including PowerShell and Command Prompt, being allowed to execute commands or reach the internet without enough restriction.

ThreatLocker MDR intercepted ACR Stealer delivered by ClickFix, showing how the social engineering technique can be used to deliver credential-stealing malware. The incident highlighted the need to limit what can execute and what it can reach if a user is tricked.

The company also published guidance on why cybersecurity strategy is shifting from threat detection to threat containment, as well as how to build cyber resilience that survives a compromise.

AI Security Still Requires Trust Boundaries

AI was still an important part of the August cybersecurity story, but not because it replaced traditional security concerns. The issue was how much access AI tools and agents receive once they are added to business environments, and what they are allowed to do with that access.

ThreatLocker’s research examined the security problems created by AI tools and agents, including how the Cursor AI hack highlights AI shortcomings, what happens when an AI agent can access secrets, and how indirect prompt injection can manipulate AI agents through untrusted data.

The company also explored what permissions autonomous AI agents should have, and the difference between excessive agency and least agency. The common question across those pieces was not whether organizations should use AI, but how to put boundaries around what AI tools can access, execute, and change.

AI security was a major focus at Black Hat and DEF CON in Las Vegas, where ThreatLocker participated in discussions about AI-driven cyber risk, workplace AI tools, and the changing role of defenders. At Black Hat, Jenkins delivered a mainstage session, “Defending against hidden risks of AI tools in the workplace,” focused on how AI tools can bypass controls and introduce new attack surfaces. Jenkins also joined Lead Cybersecurity Engineer Kieran Human for the breakout session, “Red teamer or AI-powered attacker? Generating, evading, and delivering malware with AI,” which demonstrated AI malware creation and exploit detection.

Exploits and Exposed Systems

ThreatLocker tracked new exploit activity and risks involving trusted tools throughout August.

The company analyzed ShieldBreak, a proof-of-concept exploit from NightmareEclipse that targets the same weakness as RoguePlanet. The company’s threat intelligence team also examined the N-able N-central vulnerability, which showed how vulnerable remote monitoring can give attackers access if left exposed.

ThreatLocker further published research on WiFi Pineapple hacking, and supply chain security lessons and best practices.

Industry Engagement and Company Momentum

ThreatLocker leaders participated in industry conversations throughout August on AI agents, phishing, session hijacking, and why foundational controls still matter most as attack techniques become more convincing.

ThreatLocker also announced a $190 million Series F funding round to support product innovation and global expansion. As part of that growth, the company announced plans to open a new office in Reading, U.K.

About ThreatLocker

ThreatLocker is a global cybersecurity leader that stops cyberattacks before they happen. The company’s Zero Trust Platform prevents breaches from both known and unknown threats by allowing only explicitly trusted software and activity across endpoints, networks, and cloud systems. Built to deploy quickly and scale across complex environments, the platform reduces operational overhead while keeping business running uninterrupted. Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, with offices in Dublin, Dubai, and Brisbane, ThreatLocker protects over 70,000 organizations worldwide.

Contact: press@threatlocker.com, 321-515-3813

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SOURCE ThreatLocker, Inc.

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APX Lending Launches Five-Year Bitcoin and Ethereum-Backed Line of Credit, Closing the Gap Between Digital Assets & Traditional Finance

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Canada’s first regulated digital-asset-backed lender launches a five-year revolving facility that lets clients borrow against Bitcoin, Ethereum or both, with no origination, prepayment or liquidation fees and up to $250 million in collateral insurance coverage.

TORONTO, Sept. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — For more than a decade, digital assets have promised to become part of everyday finance. But delivering on that promise requires more than innovation alone. It requires financial infrastructure people can trust and use. APX Lending (“APX”) has spent years building the regulated credit products and systems needed to make that possible. The launch of the APX Line of Credit is the latest step toward that goal.

Built for Real-World Financial Needs

APX clients have already used digital-asset-backed loans to finance businesses, pay down high-interest debt, put money toward mortgages and meet other real-world financial needs. The APX Line of Credit is designed for the reality that those needs often evolve over time, rather than arriving as a single transaction.

This new offering expands APX’s digital-asset credit platform, which now spans fixed-term lending, revolving credit and Lending-as-a-Service.

How the Line of Credit Works

The five-year revolving facility lets clients borrow against Bitcoin, Ethereum or both, repay principal when they choose and redraw available credit as their needs change.

Borrowers establish the facility once rather than applying for a new loan each time they need liquidity. Interest accrues only on the amount drawn, with no interest charged on unused capacity and no fees for repaying drawn funds.

Annual rates range from 10.49% to 11.99%, depending on the outstanding balance, and there are no origination, prepayment or liquidation fees.

“At APX, we’re constantly asking how credit against digital assets can be made safer, more flexible and better for the borrower,” said Andrei Poliakov, Founder and CEO of APX Lending. “A revolving line of credit is something our clients have asked us for repeatedly. You may need money for a purchase today, an investment three months from now and a business expense later in the year. You shouldn’t have to start a new loan every time. We built the Line of Credit so you establish the facility once, then draw, repay and redraw as your needs change.”

Bitcoin and Ethereum, Together

Unlike APX‘s fixed-term loans, which are collateralized by either BTC or ETH, the Line of Credit can use both assets together to calculate borrowing capacity.

For example, a client holding $200,000 of Bitcoin and $100,000 of Ethereum can use the combined $300,000 value to support a single line of credit. At 60% LTV, that collateral could provide up to $180,000 of borrowing capacity.

Available credit changes dynamically based on the current market value of the collateral and the amount already drawn. As collateral values rise or fall, borrowing capacity adjusts with them.

Built on Years of Infrastructure, Not Just a New Feature

Putting “line of credit” on a product page is easy. Making it hold up for a volatile asset class, at scale, with real money on the line, is a different problem entirely. It is a problem APX has spent years building the fundamentals to solve.

From choosing to operate within a regulated framework when much of the digital-asset lending market did not, to building the systems that now power APX products and third-party lending solutions, APX has developed the infrastructure needed to make digital assets more practical in everyday finance and safer to borrow against.

That infrastructure includes:

Regulatory framework: APX operates within a regulated framework built specifically for digital-asset-backed lending, with compliance processes supporting its lending activities across multiple jurisdictions. Institutional-grade custody and insurance: client collateral is held in segregated BitGo Trust cold-storage wallets, never rehypothecated and protected by insurance coverage of up to $250 million. On-chain transparency: clients can independently verify their collateral on-chain 24/7 through the APX platform. Automated collateral and risk management: APX continuously monitors digital-asset prices and loan LTVs, with systems built to manage margin notifications and partial liquidations as market conditions change. That includes APX’s 90/85 Standard, which liquidates only enough collateral to reduce LTV from 90% to 85%, preserving as much of the client’s digital-asset holdings as possible. Security and operational controls: APX’s security program includes SOC 2-audited controls designed to support the systems, processes and safeguards required to operate digital-asset lending infrastructure reliably and at scale.

That same foundation powers APX’s global Lending-as-a-Service offering, enabling financial institutions and fintechs to offer APX-powered digital-asset lending products to their own clients without building the infrastructure from scratch.

Bringing Digital Assets and Traditional Finance Together

The digital-asset industry has given both clients and traditional financial institutions plenty of reasons to be cautious. That caution has helped keep digital assets and traditional finance in separate worlds. APX’s mission is to bring those worlds closer together by building regulated digital-asset credit infrastructure around custody, transparency, compliance and risk management. The goal is simple: clients should be able to access liquidity against their digital assets without having to choose between the flexibility those assets offer and the standards they expect from traditional finance.

APX was the first digital-asset-backed lender approved by the Canadian securities regulators and is registered with both FINTRAC and FinCEN.

“Digital assets do not need to live in a separate corner of finance,” said Poliakov. “The people using them want the same things everyone else wants: access to financial products that give them greater freedom and control over their lives, confidence that their assets are safe, complete transparency into who they are dealing with, and a system they can rely on when they need it. We have spent years building APX around that idea, because trust is what ultimately brings these two worlds together.”

The APX Line of Credit is now available to eligible borrowers in supported jurisdictions at www.apxlending.com.

About APX Lending 
Founded in 2023, APX Lending is a regulated digital-asset credit infrastructure company providing crypto-backed loans directly to borrowers and powering partner-branded products through its Lending-as-a-Service platform. APX combines technology, underwriting, capital, collateral management, servicing and compliance to help partners launch embedded crypto-backed credit products. 

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SOURCE APX Lending

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In HelloNation, Hearing Expert Allison Liberio Highlights Early Signs of Hearing Loss Adults Should Not Ignore

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The article explains subtle symptoms and why early recognition supports better long-term auditory health.

SOUTHLAKE, Texas, Sept. 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — What are the early signs of hearing loss that adults should not ignore? A HelloNation article featuring Hearing Expert Allison Liberio of Family Hearing Practice in Southlake, Texas, explores how hearing loss in adults develops gradually and what signals may indicate a need for attention.

The HelloNation article explains that hearing loss in adults often begins slowly, making early symptoms easy to overlook. One of the most common early signs of hearing loss is frequently asking others to repeat themselves during everyday conversations. The article notes that when this happens consistently, even in quiet settings, it may reflect a developing issue rather than a simple distraction.

Another early indicator involves increasing the volume on televisions or radios. The article describes how this change often goes unnoticed by the individual but is recognized by others nearby. When volume levels feel comfortable to one person but too loud to others, it can signal a shift in auditory health.

Difficulty understanding conversations in noisy environments is also highlighted as a key warning sign. The article explains that many adults with early hearing loss can hear voices but struggle to understand what is being said, especially in restaurants, social gatherings, or busy workplaces. Speech may sound muffled or unclear when background noise competes for attention, making conversations harder to follow even when voices seem loud enough.

The article also notes behavioral changes that may develop over time. Some individuals begin avoiding social interactions without realizing that hearing challenges are the underlying cause. As conversations require more effort, withdrawal can happen gradually.

Phone conversations may also become more difficult. The article explains that without visual cues, such as facial expressions or lip movements, individuals with hearing loss in adults may struggle more to understand speech. Increased effort or frequent misunderstandings during calls can indicate a change in hearing ability.

Tinnitus is another condition discussed in the article. Described as ringing, buzzing, or hissing in the ears, tinnitus often appears alongside hearing changes. While not everyone with tinnitus has hearing loss, the article notes that persistent symptoms should be evaluated by an audiologist to better understand potential connections.

The article also explains how high-frequency hearing loss can affect clarity rather than volume. Individuals may hear that someone is speaking but struggle to distinguish certain consonant sounds, causing words to blend together in conversation. The article notes that this pattern is often mistaken for other mumbling, even though it may reflect underlying hearing changes.

Fatigue after conversations is another sign that may go unrecognized. The article describes how the brain works harder to process incomplete sound signals, which can lead to increased mental strain. Feeling unusually tired after meetings or social interactions may indicate that the auditory system is under pressure.

Risk factors are also addressed, with age identified as the most common contributor. However, the article emphasizes that noise-induced hearing loss, certain medications, and health conditions can affect individuals at many stages of life.

A hearing evaluation is presented as the most reliable way to assess these changes. The article explains that visiting an audiologist provides a clear understanding of hearing ability and helps guide next steps. In most cases, the process is straightforward and offers valuable insight into overall auditory health.

The article concludes by emphasizing that early recognition matters. Addressing the early signs of hearing loss can help preserve communication, maintain relationships, and support quality of life over time.

Early Signs of Hearing Loss Adults Should Not Ignore features insights from Allison Liberio, Hearing Experts of Southlake, Texas, in HelloNation.

About HelloNation

HelloNation is America’s Good News Network, a premier media platform built on the idea that good news travels faster when real people tell real stories. Through its community-focused digital publications and innovative “edvertising” approach, HelloNation delivers expert-driven, good-news content that informs, inspires, and spotlights the leaders making a meaningful impact in their communities.

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SOURCE HelloNation

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