Spotlight On: Mike Rombach, Vice President, General Manager, NRG Energy
June 2025 — In an interview with Invest:, Mike Rombach, vice president and general manager at NRG Energy, discussed the growing need for smart home energy management and how Philadelphia is well positioned in the energy market. “Pennsylvania is the only state in the east that still exports more energy than it consumes,” he said.
What’s been driving overall growth over the past year?
AI demand has really skyrocketed. Every state where we have a presence in the East is trying to develop its own contingency plans. They all want to attract AI data centers, but recognize these centers pose a different challenge for residential customers and reliable, consistent supply. It’s happening in virtually every state and affecting each one differently.
This demand is accelerating the need for smart home energy management. Pennsylvania is the only state in the East that still exports more energy than it consumes, which is particularly unique for the Philadelphia market. Even so, Pennsylvania remains very conservative about scaling energy needs in response to increased AI demand. They are actively working to develop alternatives for customers, and we’ve had some good discussions with the PUC about how smart home technology can play a role in helping to manage this demand more effectively.
How are you positioned to meet increasing energy needs?
We serve both electricity and gas customers in Pennsylvania, with a particular focus on the Philadelphia market. We are one of the largest shippers of natural gas into the Northeast via pipeline. That allows us to better serve gas customers in key markets because we are transporting and delivering more natural gas across those geographies.
How are you going about developing Virtual Power Plants (VPPs)?
The East is a bit further behind in some areas due to variability in utility infrastructure. In Texas, there are only a handful of transmission companies. Meanwhile, in the East, we interact and compete with 80 utilities in delivering energy to our customers.
Our ability to launch a Virtual Power Plant (VPP), which uses the collective energy resources of items in your home like electric vehicles, solar panels, and battery systems, to create a single power plant and provide grid power, varies across those 80 geographies. We have to partner with key utilities to launch a VPP, so it’ll take longer than it might elsewhere, but Pennsylvania has to be willing to encourage residential users to invest in (or install) smart thermostats. Ohio, for example, is already offering $100 rebates at the state level to drive up thermostat penetration.
Pennsylvania has more smart meters than any other state that we serve, which makes it well positioned to support a VPP. However, different utilities use those smart meters and the data in inconsistent ways. If Pennsylvania can get the utilities to be consistent in how they use that data, it enhances our ability to better serve the VPP.
We’re probably a little further ahead in Pennsylvania than other states, but collectively, the East is still behind Texas on VPP implementation. That said, I do expect Pennsylvania and areas like Philadelphia to be leading the pack in the near future.
In what ways is NRG giving back to the community?
We have several established programs — all centered around our core belief that we must support the communities where we serve customers, and where our employees live and work. This has led to a number of meaningful partnerships.
One of our most notable community programs is NRG Gives, where NRG annually gives $100,000 in grants to nonprofits across Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and that process starts with our employees nominating candidate non-profit recipients. Organizations then apply for one of those grants, and NRG employees vote on their charity of choice from the submissions.
These organizations serve the communities we live in, so that’s really what led to the eight nominated and selected organizations, which spanned geographies from western Pennsylvania to New Jersey and the Philadelphia market in between. We’ve had some organizations that serve veterans, and others that focus on impoverished communities, among others — all doing great work.
It’s a great way for us to deepen our ties with the community. I love that program, and we write a new chapter every year.
What are your primary goals and priorities for the next five years?
Over the course of the next five years, we need to steadily place more control in the hands of the end consumer, enabling them to better manage their energy consumption. I think something similar will happen on the commercial side as well, but the primary shift needs to start with changing how customers think about energy.
Right now, most customers receive their energy bill and pay it without much thought. We need to move toward a model where customers say, ‘Prices are rising, energy is an important part of my budget, and I have every incentive to do what I can to manage it.” That kind of customer awareness is likely to grow considerably over the next five years.
Ultimately, that’s the goal we need to set for ourselves. As a company, that is exactly where NRG is headed: transforming from a traditional energy provider into one that integrates technology to empower customers. Today, most people have little real control over their energy bill beyond a basic thermostat. The energy industry owes its customers far more, and NRG intends to deliver on that need over the course of the next five years.
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