Full Title: Power Shift: How Virtual Power Plants Unlock Cleaner, More Affordable Electricity Systems
Author(s): Tyler Fitch, Jacob Becker, Kevin Brehm, Jesse Cohen, and Lauren Shwisberg
Publisher(s): Rocky Mountain Institute
Publication Date: September 30, 2024
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
Virtual power plants (VPPs) are flexible and quickly deployable resources that are poised to address some of the most pressing, interconnected challenges of our electricity grid: growing loads, a retiring conventional generation fleet, and the need for rapid deployment of new, utility-scale renewable generation. Power Shift: How Virtual Power Plants Unlock Cleaner, More Affordable Electricity Systems shows how distributed technologies, aggregated into virtual power plants, can reduce emissions and costs for ratepayers by managing peak demand, reducing the need for expensive, emissions-intensive gas generation, and unlocking renewable portfolios.
Power Shift provides a vision for what’s possible for VPPs in grid planning and operations, and points toward key conditions and initial actions policymakers, utilities, and VPP platforms can make to support VPPs in realizing their potential impacts. Regulators, utility decision makers, and grid policymakers can use Power Shift’s insights to ensure their grid is unlocking cleaner, more affordable electricity systems with VPPs.