UtilityDive: "Virtual power plants helped save the grid during heat dome." Last month the eastern U.S. sweltered in record heat. Electricity demand reached multi-yr peaks + it seemed the grid might succumb. Grid operators + public officials scrambled to avoid a disaster, ordering generators to defer maintenance + customers to conserve energy. "Sunrun dispatched more than 340 megawatts [MW] from customer-sited batteries on the evening of June 24." On that same day, EnergyHub shed 900 MW of peak load. Finally, "Uplight managed about 350 MW of flexible load in 45 dispatch events across 16 utility programs over the course of the heat dome week." Thus, significant support came from aggregated distributed energy resources [DER], where homeowners + businesses time-shifted demand away from peaks with smart thermostats plus refrigeration + lighting controls, but also shared distributed supply with rooftop solar, EV batteries, + home batteries. "A [spanking] new, 400-MW VPP has a net cost of $43/kW-year, compared with $69/kW-year for a utility-scale battery and $99/kW-year for a gas-fired peaker plant, the U.S. Department of Energy said in a January update to its virtual power plant liftoff report." And in 2024 an RMI report said VPPs could be deployed in six to 12 months, quicker than any form of utility-scale generation. Also in 2024, the Department of Energy estimated the total U.S. VPP capacity was at least 30 gigawatts [GW]. Finally, "while the rollback of clean energy tax credits will likely slow the deployment of distributed energy resources, that will also make it more expensive to build utility-scale generation, likely netting out to a boost for VPPs. Think carefully, + realize VPPs will not be a Republican target. Which is extraordinarily fortuitous.
