{"id":1547913,"date":"2025-07-19T16:50:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-19T20:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/?p=1547913"},"modified":"2025-07-19T16:50:00","modified_gmt":"2025-07-19T20:50:00","slug":"virtual-power-plants-helped-save-the-grid-during-heat-dome","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bugaluu.com\/news\/virtual-power-plants-helped-save-the-grid-during-heat-dome\/1547913\/","title":{"rendered":"Virtual Power Plants Helped Save The Grid During Heat Dome"},"content":{"rendered":"

Virtual Power Plants Helped Save The Grid During Heat Dome<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

By Brian Martucci of UtilityDive<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

As the eastern half of the United States baked under record heat late last month and electricity demand reached multi-year peaks, it looked like the grid might succumb.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Grid operators<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0public officials<\/a>\u00a0scrambled to avoid a disaster, ordering generators to defer maintenance and customers to conserve energy. The PJM Interconnection\u00a0served about 161 GW of load<\/a>\u00a0on June 24, its highest demand since 2011 and not far off its all-time high of 165.6 GW.<\/p>\n

But aside from\u00a0scattered outages caused by heat-damaged electrical delivery equipment<\/a>\u00a0in parts of the New York City area, Eastern U.S. grids largely weathered the heatwave.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Grid experts \u2014 and at least one grid operator \u2014 say at least some of the credit goes to distributed energy resource aggregations and flexible loads dispatching at higher rates than ever before. Those \u201cvirtual\u201d or distributed power plants helped keep the lights on as generator reserve margins plummeted.<\/p>\n

\u201cPJM said that demand response was essential,\u201d Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chair Mark Christie said in a\u00a0June 30 press conference<\/a>\u00a0focused on the need for resource adequacy amid\u00a0rising load forecasts<\/a>. \u201cThat 161-GW peak would have been higher without DR, so DR is an important part of the mix too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Major virtual power plant operators matched near-record peak loads with unprecedented dispatch activity.\u00a0Sunrun<\/a>\u00a0dispatched more than 340 MW from customer-sited batteries on the evening of June 24. The same day,\u00a0EnergyHub<\/a>\u00a0shed 900 MW of peak load and shifted 3.5 GWh of energy away from the highest-demand periods.\u00a0Uplight<\/a>\u00a0managed about 350 MW of flexible load in 45 dispatch events across 16 utility programs over the course of the heat dome week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Supportive state policy, expectations for rising power demand and simple economics are pushing once-skeptical utilities to embrace VPPs, said Hannah Bascom, chief growth officer at Uplight.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re seeing [utility] folks on the supply side saying, \u2018Wait, how many megawatts do we have lying around?\u2019 And the light bulbs are starting to go off,\u201d Bascom said in an interview.<\/p>\n

Quicker and cheaper than traditional generation<\/h3>\n

It helps that it costs far less \u2014 and takes less time \u2014 to aggregate existing customer-sited resources than it does to build new dispatchable generation or storage, Bascom added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A 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\u00a0said in a January update<\/a>\u00a0to its virtual power plant liftoff report. An\u00a0RMI report<\/a>\u00a0released last July said VPPs could be deployed in six to 12 months, quicker than any form of utility-scale generation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

RMI\u2019s report made a point of saying utilities eyeing VPPs in mid-2024 could have them ready in time for this summer\u2019s heat.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s clear many utilities and other load-serving entities have launched or expanded VPP offerings recently, said Kevin Brehm, a manager in RMI\u2019s carbon-free electricity practice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re definitely seeing progress in terms of the number of utility [VPP] programs, and in regulation and policy being implemented to advance VPPs,\u201d he said in an interview.<\/p>\n

Last year, RMI and the VPP Partnership\u00a0published a flipbook<\/a>\u00a0featuring 75 U.S. VPPs with 3.9 million enrolled customers and 1.5 GW of capacity. That\u2019s a small fraction of DOE\u2019s 30 GW estimate of total U.S. VPP capacity in 2024.<\/p>\n

Brehm cautioned that because VPPs can be deployed so quickly, published figures may underestimate capacity and thus the potential for utilities and aggregators to dispatch it during extreme weather events.<\/p>\n

\u201cActual VPP capacity is what ultimately determines the level of response,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd [public reports] don\u2019t tell the whole story because there\u2019s a lag.\u201d<\/p>\n

Residential smart thermostats are already central to hot-climate VPP programs like Arizona Public Service Cool Rewards, whose 140 MW of thermostat capacity accounted for most of the utility\u2019s 190-MW VPP as of\u00a0last September<\/a>. They\u2019ll become even more important as smart thermostat adoption increases from today\u2019s relatively low levels, Brehm said.<\/p>\n

Commercial and industrial participation has room to grow<\/h3>\n

But much of the country\u2019s VPP capacity still comes from manual commercial and industrial demand response programs, where power-hungry facilities agree to curtail load during peak periods, Wood Mackenzie said last year in a\u00a0report<\/a>. Another report by\u00a0Energy Systems Integration Group<\/a>\u00a0showed C&I enrollments in wholesale demand response programs ranging from 4% to 10% of total potential capacity in most grid operator territories.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven how much capacity prices have risen recently, we\u2019re going to see a lot more [C&I] demand response, and the potential is on the [multi] gigawatt scale,\u201d Brehm said.<\/p>\n

With the notable exception of the California Independent System Operator\u2019s territory, C&I demand response enrollment has recently flatlined or declined in most regions due to limited customer awareness, weak financial incentives and barriers to wholesale market participation, according to ESIG.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Brehm is hopeful that better technology and program design will turn the tide. Some VPP operators, like Voltus and CPower, coordinate multiple customer-sited resources, rather than interrupting power at a facility\u2019s meter and shutting down production lines, he said. During the June heatwave,\u00a0CPower says<\/a>\u00a0it dispatched 18.5 GWh across 120 events in PJM, ISO-New England and the New York Independent System Operator\u2019s territory.<\/p>\n

Small and midsize commercial facilities can also provide meaningful support during extreme weather events, said Thomas Flynn, chief administrative officer and general counsel at Budderfly, a commercial energy management provider serving more than 7,000 restaurants, medical clinics, convenience stores, hotels, gyms and other commercial sites nationwide.<\/p>\n

Budderfly activated its first VPP on June 1, just in time for the heatwave. Flynn said the initial deployment included capacity in PJM, ISO-New England and the Southwest Power Pool \u2014 all hit hard last month \u2014 as well as CAISO. Enrollment could expand to NYISO and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe ran events across all of our programs during the week of the heat dome, activating programs from coast to coast,\u201d Flynn said. \u201cThe events went well.\u201d<\/p>\n

For now, Budderfly\u2019s VPP mainly dispatches HVAC systems via smart thermostats, but Flynn said it will soon expand to include onsite refrigeration systems, lighting, rooftop solar, electric vehicle chargers and onsite battery storage.<\/p>\n

Because Budderfly owns those resources, dispatch is simpler than for customer-owned equipment, Flynn said. For local utilities, that simplicity \u2014 and the fact that commercial sites generally have larger and more consistent power loads \u2014 means more reliable and predictable VPP capacity.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cUtilities see this model as a more reliable and scalable solution for flexible load capacity, particularly in regions where traditional demand response has been underutilized,\u201d Flynn said. Budderfly can target dispatch in grid nodes without big industrial customers to provide load flexibility on a larger scale, he added.<\/p>\n

Like Budderfly, Sunrun generally owns customer-sited resources. Its rapidly growing arsenal of batteries allows it to play a meaningful role in responding to extreme weather events, said Chris Rauscher, its head of grid services.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve fully embraced a storage-first strategy over the last few years,\u201d Rauscher said. \u201cNearly 70% of our new installations include battery storage, up from just 10% a few years ago.\u201d<\/p>\n

Republican attack on renewables could help VPPs<\/h3>\n

Despite the\u00a0recent U-turn in federal policy around renewables<\/a>, the Trump administration\u2019s preference for dispatchable power and declaration of an energy emergency create an opening for distributed asset owners like Sunrun, Rauscher said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDispatchable energy is a top priority for this administration, and critical for grid stability,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the same time, Rauscher added, utilities are waking up to the fact that they need more electrons as fast as possible. Sunrun operates 17 VPP programs across the U.S., including utility-run programs like ConnectedSolutions in the Northeast and state programs like Demand Side Grid Support in California.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe narrative is shifting [and] utilities are starting to see VPPs not just as pilots, but as core infrastructure,\u201d Rauscher said.<\/p>\n

Uplight\u2019s Bascom agreed. 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\u00a0netting out to a boost for VPPs<\/a>, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe still haven\u2019t hit mass-market penetration,\u201d she said. \u201cWe think there\u2019s a lot of opportunity to leverage these resources for way, way cheaper than any type of new generation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Tyler Durden<\/a><\/span>
\nSat, 07\/19\/2025 – 12:50<\/span><\/p>\n

\u200bhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/markets\/virtual-power-plants-helped-save-grid-during-heat-dome<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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