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
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
Guest blogger Peter Asmus of Navigant Research posts this week about virtual power plants, distributed energy resources management systems, microgrids — and the way in which Alectra is bringing them all together to meet its customers energy needs and its own grid reliability requirements.
Electricity is a multidimensional product that requires constant fine-tuning. Otherwise, the lights go out, resulting in substantial lost economic activity. The challenge of accomplishing this task has become increasingly difficult as the fleet of distributed energy resources (DERs) begins to take over electricity resource pools. Beginning in 2018, annual centralized power resources began to give way to distributed generation and a more diverse DER mix. I noted last year that this transition was likely.
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Topics:
DERs,
DERMs,
virtual power plant,
distributed energy,
VPP,
Navigant Research,
energy cloud,
Alectra,
microgrid
This week, we feature guest blogger Peter Asmus of Navigant Research, who talks about virtual power plants (VPPs) and their changing role in the utility industry.
The primary goal of a virtual power plant (VPP) is to achieve the greatest possible profit for asset owners—such as a resident with rooftop solar PV coupled with batteries—while maintaining the proper balance of the electricity grid at the lowest possible economic and environmental cost. The purpose is clear, but getting to this nirvana is not easy. Nevertheless, there are clear signs that the VPP market is maturing. New partnerships are pointing the way for control software platforms that can manage distributed energy resources (DER) in creative ways.
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Topics:
DERs,
DERMs,
virtual power plant,
ABB,
DERMS, distributed energy resources,,
Navigant Research,
VPPs,
Enbala
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT:
Virtual power plants or VPPs are one of the hottest topics in the energy industry today. In fact, investments in VPPs are expected to total over $68.6 billion by 2025 -- this according to Navigant Research, who has published a new white paper on the topic.
Software advancements are enabling greatly expanded capabilities in the distributed energy resources (DERs) that can be aggregated into VPPs, which are now capable of responding to the needs of the power grid at the sub-second speeds required for instantaneous grid balancing.
Titled Stacking Values with Virtual Power Plants in Today's Digital Power Grid: Moving Distributed Networked Energy Into the Mainstream, the paper was authored by Navigant's Peter Asmus and covers:
- The expansion and convergence of VPP market segments
- New distributed energy resource architectures
- Physical VPP grid and market interaction values
- ROIs on VPPs
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Topics:
distributed energy resources,
DERMs,
grid balance,
virtual power plant,
Navigant Research,
VPPs
