Under the hood of a novel virtual power plant

We have 60 gigawatts of virtual power plant capacity in the US. But that needs to triple in the next decade to support a zero-carbon grid – while also meeting a surge in peak demand.

There are lots of different models for building VPPs that link together solar, batteries, EV chargers, and smart thermostats. Sunrun and PG&E tested a model this summer that uses solar and batteries to create a “permanent load shift” to offset the evening peak in California.

It provided tens of megawatts of capacity to the utility. But there were also some issues with batteries not delivering the expected output. What do the results tell us about what it will take to make VPPs a core piece of utility operations?

In this episode: Editor Lisa Martine Jenkins presents a story from the pages of Latitude Media on some surprising results from PG&E and Sunrun’s virtual power plant pilot.