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Define virtual power8/7/2023 Electrification: Over the coming decades, increasing adoption of electrified technologies such as heat pumps and electric vehicles will mean we must accommodate sustained load growth in the electric system.By 2050, VPPs could avoid 44–59 million metric tons of CO 2 per year. And the climate benefits of VPPs will only increase over time as the United States deploys more electric devices, brings more variable renewable energy on line, and retires coal generation. Decarbonization: The power of VPPs to create more efficient grid use can go a long way in reducing CO 2.VPPs can further reduce wholesale energy and fuel costs by shifting demand away from high-cost peaking resources and toward low- or no-marginal cost resources. Homes and businesses that participate in VPPs receive direct compensation, and those that do not still experience lower bills resulting from deferred transmission, distribution, and generation capacity investments that typically get passed on to customers. Affordability: With increasing inflation and volatile natural gas prices, customers need affordable energy solutions more than ever.VPPs are already helping provide resilience when the grid is down, and offer numerous other unique reliability benefits that traditional power plants do not: VPPs can be built and deployed rapidly, sited near loads (and can therefore bypass transmission and distribution constraints), and can turn electric devices into resilient power supplies for homes and critical facilities during grid outages. Reliability: From California to Texas to Puerto Rico, we’re seeing the risks of extreme weather and other reliability and resilience threats in every part of the country.VPPs can help regulators, utility planners or operators, and other grid stakeholders address key challenges facing the grid, including reliability, affordability, decarbonization, electrification, and health and equity. VPPs Aggregate Distributed, Grid-Interactive Electric Devices Single-family homes, multi-family homes, offices, stores, factories, cars, trucks, and buses can all participate in a VPP. The components of a VPP can include electric vehicles (EVs) and chargers, heat pumps, home appliances, HVAC equipment, batteries, plug loads, and industrial mechanical equipment. When these devices are aggregated and coordinated, they can provide many of the same energy services (capacity, energy, ancillary services) as a traditional power plant. These devices can be flexibly charged, discharged, or managed to meet grid needs. What Is a VPP?Īt its core, a VPP is comprised of hundreds or thousands of households and businesses that offer the latent potential of their thermostats, electric vehicles (EVs), appliances, batteries, and solar arrays to support the grid. If homes and businesses can save the grid from going dark for free just based off a text message, imagine what they could do if there were a proper market for VPPs. Those customers had partnered with companies like OhmConnect, SunRun, Leap, Autogrid, Voltus, Tesla, and others to join with their neighbors to form “virtual power plants.”Ī virtual power plant (VPP) is a collection of small-scale energy resources that, aggregated together and coordinated with grid operations, can provide the same kind of reliability and economic value to the grid as traditional power plants. The grid operator in California wasn’t just hoping those customers would show-up and voluntarily cut demand - they were counting on them to do so, and paying them accordingly. Despite millions of homeowners not receiving compensation for their energy conservation efforts, hundreds of thousands of Californians were paid for the services they provided. The current system is neither just nor efficient, but there is hope. It also illustrates a concerning paradox: While a handful of power plant owners are paid millions to keep the grid operating, millions of homeowners were paid nothing to stabilize the grid when it really mattered. Energy demand dropped blackouts were avoided.Ĭalifornia’s successful response illustrates how devices in our homes and businesses - air conditioners, EV chargers, dryers, and more, can add up to have a big impact. Last summer, California’s record-breaking, grid-straining heat wave forced the state government to send text messages asking residents for emergency, voluntary energy conservation.
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