The time may have arrived for Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) to fully realize their potential. In a VPP, groups of distributed energy resources (DERs) like EVs, batteries, and heat pumps can be managed to consume power when it is inexpensive, avoid consuming power when it is expensive, and even provide power back to the grid when supplies are limited.<\/p>\n
While VPPs have been around for many years, operating commercially in places like Australia, the US power grid has not seen wide-scale integration. This is now changing because VPPs can help the grid do more with less - supporting new loads without requiring expensive new investments in grid expansion.<\/p>\n
In this episode, Jigar Shah, Director of the Loan Programs Office at the US Department of Energy, joins us to share his vision of a much-expanded role for VPPs on the power grid and why he thinks the sector is ready to scale up. You\u2019ll hear how a handful of VPPs and programs to support them have been launched in the US. You\u2019ll also hear how the US Department of Energy is exploring ways to accelerate the development and integration of VPPs, including making financing available through Jigar\u2019s office to support the adoption of VPP-enabled DERs under the Title 17 Clean Energy Financing program.<\/p>\n
And because Jigar is with the Department of Energy, sharing information that should be accessible to everyone, we decided to make this one of our occasional lagniappe<\/em> shows and put it in front of the paywall so that premium and free listeners alike can enjoy it. Hey free listeners, now you can see what you\u2019ve been missing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Virtual Power Plants are finally ready to scale up, making it possible for the grid to do more with less as we \u201celectrify everything.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[111,1145],"tags":[1113,716,1114,371,97,184,1118,28,446,195,939,1116,364,1115,1119,90,1117,1111,1112],"class_list":["post-3789","xen_episodes","type-xen_episodes","status-publish","hentry","category-energy-transition-show-podcasts","category-free-complete-shows","tag-battery-storage","tag-cobalt","tag-customer-resources","tag-demand-flexibility","tag-ders","tag-distributed-energy-resources","tag-ercot","tag-evs","tag-firstenergy","tag-heat-pumps","tag-householder","tag-lagniappe","tag-lithium","tag-loan-programs-office","tag-puct","tag-shale","tag-sodium-ion","tag-virtual-power-plants","tag-vpp","xen_guests-jigar-shah"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n