Jen Downing
Operating Partner, Ara Partners. On 1 show, 1 appearance. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
investoroperatorexecutivearapartners.com ↗
At Ara Partners, she works alongside portfolio company leaders to execute growth plans focused on industrial decarbonization. She previously served at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office, where she chaired the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program and led the landmark report Pathways to Commercial Liftoff for Virtual Power Plants.
1shows
1appearances
17statements
9resolved
7supported
1contradicted
78%fully supported
2said about them ↓ Everything Jen Downing said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Downing: VPP peaking capacity can be 60% cheaper than gas peakers
“For a utility, procuring peaking capacity from a VPP can be 60% cheaper than procuring it from a natural gas peaker plant.”
Downing: Utility CapEx return models heavily disincentivize low-cost VPP adoption
“The utility business model of compensating CapEx spending with maybe a seven to nine percent margin and passing through OPEX at cost to the consumer does not give utilities the right incentives to choose low-cost options such as VPPs”
Downing: US electric grid must serve 200 GW of new peak demand
“Well, we have the need to serve 200 gigawatts of new peak demand between now and 2030.”
Downing: Tripling US VPP capacity by 2030 would save $10 billion annually
“But if we can triple the capacity of VPPs between now and 2030, we could serve 10 to 20% of peak load nationally through virtual power plants. And if we did that, because they are a lower cost solution, we'd be saving about ten billion dollars per year.”
Downing: Utilities will increasingly procure virtual power plants directly
“And so I think what you'll end up seeing is utilities recognizing the value that they can get out of these VPPs and procuring VPPs directly.”
Downing: VPPs are hard physical assets aggregated via software, not abstractions
“People misunderstand the word virtual to mean, you know, not real. When these are hard assets on the grid, it's not phone calls anymore. It's software integrations, and it's large aggregations of small resources that really add up to something very valuable.”
Downing: Most VPP spending goes directly to participant incentives
“But what's even more striking is that the money that is spent on virtual power plants, the majority of those costs are actually participant incentives.”
Downing: US currently has 30 to 60 GW in VPP capacity
“Well, depending on how you define it we have about 30 to 60 gigawatts of capacity in VPPs today.”
Downing: Wholesale prices for VPPs do not capture distribution value
“I think when you have virtual power plants bidding into wholesale markets and earning a price that represents the value to the bulk power system, It's an incomplete price, because it's not taking a, it's not taking account of the value to the distribution grid…”
Downing: MISO and NYISO cite IT and staffing constraints delaying Order 2222
“You have MISO saying that they have, you know, multi-year timelines for the IT systems that need to be upgraded to implement this. You have New York ISO saying, you know, we don't have the staff capacity to register large numbers of very small DERs, so we're s…”
Downing: Gas peakers and grid lines operate at 5% to 25% utilization
“You know, that peaker plant may turn on for five percent, maybe 10% of hours of the year, and you're increasing the capacity of your transmission distribution lines to serve that higher peak, but then on average across the year, they're running at maybe 20, 25…”
Downing: Sunrun was first to bid VPP capacity into wholesale market
“Sunrun, and they participate in many different ways across the country in different markets with utilities, but, you know, they were the first to bid VPP capacity into a wholesale market. They bid capacity into ISO New England in and then deliver that energy i…”
Downing: Green Mountain Power saved millions replacing peakers with batteries
“Another example of a pure battery VPP is what Green Mountain Power is doing with their batteries where they have chosen to offer batteries to their customers at a low cost instead of procuring that capacity from peaker plants. And they've saved, Green Mountain…”
Downing: US adding 20 to 90 GW of EV charger demand annually
“So between now and 2030, we're adding roughly 20 to 90 gigawatts of charger demand per year.”
DOE's Downing: Only a minority of states use integrated distribution system planning
“Right now, a minority of states are doing integrated distribution system planning, where they're taking a look at, you know, what capacity they have on their distribution systems in relation to the bulk power system needs. But more and more states are adopting…”
Downing: DOE accepted 'VPP' because it couldn't erase market terminology
“We may have influence at the Department of Energy, but we didn't think we had so much influence we could erase the term VPP from the market.”
The other half of the tape: Jen Downing's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 2 times in 2 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
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the Green Blueprint 2
2024 1 mention in 1 episode
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One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Jen's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GREEN BLUEPRINTLEDGER | Operating Partner, Ara Partners | 1 | 17 | 78% 7/9 | full record on the Green Blueprint → |