By: Christine Canaly
Date: October 11th, 2024
This growing reality was brought up at the Crestone Energy Fair (CEF) Renewable
Energy Panel in September, as part of individuals being able to participate in generating
their own energy and putting what is not used (in household or business) back onto the
grid, or in case of emergency, cycle energy back into their homes; and ideally being
financially compensated for generating excess energy back onto the grid.
At 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. These devices can be flexibly
charged, discharged, or managed to meet grid needs. When these devices are combined and
coordinated, they can provide many of the same energy services (capacity, energy, ancillary
services) as a traditional power plant.
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. Single-family homes, multi-family homes, offices, stores, factories, cars, trucks,
and buses can all participate in a VPP.
Jan Rose, who was the featured Renewable Energy panelist at CEF, mentioned that
the newer F-150 Ford trucks, “have storage capacity that can provide an energy source
back to your home. I hear there is a 4-month waiting list for these trucks.”
VPP’s aren’t just theoretical, they are already happening. “On the edge of the
Bavarian Forest, you can already see the enormous reorganization of the electricity system
from the train window, which is progressing step by step here as everywhere else in the
country. Photovoltaic panels greet travelers from the roofs of houses, warehouses, fences,
noise barriers, and along the railway line itself, promising a little optimism in uncertain
times.”
PV systems have been integrated into Next Kraftwerke’s virtual power
plant. Through the virtual power plant's electricity trading, FIMA generates income on the
power exchange, most of which is directly reinvested in new projects.
To learn about VPP’s closer to home, the state of Maryland has been a leader in
VPP’s.
Succinctly put, a virtual power plant (VPP) is a collection of small-scale energy
resources that, combined together and coordinated with grid operations; can provide the
same kind of reliability and economic value to the grid as traditional power plants.
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