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The European Take on Virtual Power Plants

By Peter Asmus on Dec 12, 2019 8:30:00 AM

Guest blogger Peter Asmus of Navigant Research writes about the virtual power plant market in Europe.

Europe, considered the birthplace of the virtual power plants (VPPs), is pushing the envelope on the concept. The continent is adapting platforms to provide new and more sophisticated capabilities to maximize the value of flexibility resources while opening doors to new value streams linked to creative ancillary service markets and real-time energy trading.

Historically, the European VPP market has centered on renewable energy integration. While this remains the case today, a shift is underway to learn from other evolving VPP markets in Canada, Australia, and Japan. The new focus includes integration of demand side resources as well as energy storage and EVs. Today, virtually anything that produces, consumes, or stores electricity (or energy) is a candidate for VPP inclusion.

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Topics: photovoltaic, Solar, DERs, DERMs, demand response, virtual power plant, flexible load, VPP, energy storage, Navigant Research, Enbala

Mitigating Climate Change: Thinking Outside The Box

By Malcolm Metcalfe on Nov 14, 2019 10:18:14 AM

From mainstream media to social media, the world is abuzz with the topic of climate change. A simple Google search on the phrase today yielded 1,100,000,00 results, and typing “gret” into Google is all it takes to bring up 107 million stories about Greta Thunberg. This 16-year-old Swedish environmental activist whose lone mission to protest climate change outside the Swedish Parliament has ignited a flame within millions of young people from more than 100 countries who have joined her with demands for climate action and a cry to “listen to the scientists.”

Even those associated with the oil industry are taking up the charge. For example, the former CEO of BP, Lord John Browne, is speaking globally about the need to clean up the atmosphere and reduce reliance on fossil fuels. His new book “Make, Think, Imagine” considers whether our demand for energy has driven the Earth’s climate to the edge of catastrophe and suggests that the same spark that triggers innovation can be used to counter its negative consequences and that it is time to “listen to the engineers.”

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Topics: renewable energy, clean energy, Electric vehicles, energy storage, climate change

Postcard From the Future: VPPs in Australia

By Peter Asmus on Sep 25, 2019 11:30:37 AM

Guest blogger Peter Asmus of Navigant Research writes about the evolution of the virtual power plant market in Australia.

Australian consumers boast one of the highest per capita consumption rates of electricity in the world (even greater than the U.S.). These consumption levels translate into flexible load resources ideal for aggregation and optimization into virtual power plants (VPPs).

What is a VPP? Think of it as a conglomeration of many distributed energy resources (DERs -- loads, but also generation, batteries and electric vehicles -- that can be combined into a pool whose sum of parts’ value is far larger than these DER assets offer individually. With sophisticated artificial intelligence software, these resources scattered across the grid can be combined “virtually” to provide the same services as a traditional 24/7 power plant -- but at much lower and environmental cost.

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Topics: photovoltaic, Solar, DERs, DERMs, demand response, virtual power plant, flexible load, VPP, energy storage, Navigant Research, Enbala, Nuclear, PV, AGL Energy

A commentary on the FERC NOPR to Integrate More DERs into Organized Markets

By J.T. Thompson on May 9, 2017 7:00:00 AM

Opening the Distributed Energy Doors is a Win-Win

In November of last year, FERC issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) around electric storage resources. The goal was to better allow these distributed energy resources (DERs) to compete in the various wholesale markets. Per their November press release, FERC’s NOPR would require that RTOs/ISOs:

Establish a participation model consisting of market rules that, recognizing the physical and operational characteristics of electric storage resources, accommodate their participation in the organized wholesale electric markets
Define distributed energy resource aggregators as a type of market participant that can participate in the organized wholesale electric markets under the participation model that best accommodates the physical and operational characteristics of its distributed energy resource aggregation

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Topics: distributed energy resources, DERs, frequency regulation, demand response, FERC, energy storage, NOPR

Generac Grid Services Blog

The European Take on Virtual Power Plants

Mitigating Climate Change: Thinking Outside The Box

Postcard From the Future: VPPs in Australia

A commentary on the FERC NOPR to Integrate More DERs into Organized Markets

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