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Title: California Successfully Tests 'Virtual Power Plant', Drawing Power
From Batteries in 100,000 Homes

Link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/08/09/...

"California's biggest electric utilities pulled off a record-breaking
test..." reports Semafor, "during the 7pm-9pm window that is typically its
time of peak demand as people come home from work." Pacific Gas &
Electric and other top California power companies switched on residential
batteries in more than 100,000 homes and drew power from them into the
broader statewide grid. The purpose of the test - the largest ever in the
state, which has by far the most home battery capacity in the U.S. - was to
see just how much power is really there for the utility to tap, and to ensure
it could be switched on, effectively running the grid in reverse, without
causing a crash. The result, which the research firm Brattle published this
week, was 535 megawatts, equal to adding a big hydro dam or a half-sized
nuclear reactor at a fraction of the cost. "Four years ago this capacity
didn't even exist," Kendrick Li, PG&E's director of clean energy
programs, told Semafor. "Now it's a really attractive option for us. It would
be silly not to harness what our customers have installed...." Last week's
test proved that in times of peak demand, PG&E can lean on its customers'
batteries rather than turn on a gas-fired peaker plant or risk a blackout, Li
said. Virtual power plants (VPPs) also facilitate the addition of more solar
energy on the grid: At the moment, California has so much solar generation at
peak hours that it can push the wholesale power price close to or even below
zero, a headache for grid managers and a disincentive for renewable project
developers. The careful manipulation of networked residential batteries
smooths out the timing disparity between peak sunshine at midday and peak
demand in the evening, allowing the excess to be soaked up and redeployed
when it's actually needed, and making power cheaper for everyone. The
expanded use of VPPs shouldn't be noticeable to battery owners, Li said,
except for the money back on their power bill; nothing about the process
prevents them from running their AC or dishwasher while their battery is
being tapped. The network can also run in reverse, with the utility taking
excess power from the grid at times of low demand and sending it into home
batteries for storage. California could easily reach over a gigawatt of VPP
capacity within five years, Li said. Nationwide, a Department of Energy study
during the Biden administration forecast that VPP capacity could reach up to
160 gigawatts by 2030, essentially negating the need for dozens of new fossil
fuel power plants, with no emissions and at a far lower cost. In 2024,
utilities in 34 states moved to initiate or expand VPP networks, according to
the advocacy group VP3. Even with a reduction in federal credits, virtual
power plants "offer a way for residential solar-plus-storage systems to
remain economically attractive for homeowners - who get paid for the
withdrawn power," the article points out - and "a way to make better use of
clean energy resources that have already been built." Sunrun's distributed
battery fleet "delivered more than two-thirds of the energy," notes Electrek,
"In total, the event pumped an average of 535 megawatts (MW) onto the grid -
enough to power over half of San Francisco... This isn't a one-off. Sunrun's
fleet already helped drop peak demand earlier this summer, delivering 325 MW
during a similar event on June 24. "The company compensates customers up to
$150 per battery per season for participating."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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