Ben Brown, CEO of Renew Home, compares the cost-effectiveness and deployment advantages of virtual power plants (VPPs) to traditional centralized peaker plants.
Insight
Brown: Individual AI adoption equals hundreds of millions of new HVACs
“Like if you think about the idea that maybe as each individual having kind of an AI co-pilot, that's the equivalent of like having hundreds of millions of new HVAC systems all of a sudden being put onto the grid.”
Assertion Partly supported
Brown: VPPs cost 40% of utility-scale battery installations
“And it would be, and the VPP would also be 40% of the cost of a utility scale battery investment.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Brown: Nearly 75% of new Nest thermostat owners opt into energy shifting
“And so we have actually seen both opt-in and engagement that we're getting nearly 75% of all new Nest thermostat customers that install a device are opting into energy shifting.”
Insight
Brown: Large VPPs remain predictably stable even with individual customer control
“When you give individuals control, large, long system, and you have hundreds of thousands of customers or a million customers, you know, stochastically we can predict, you know, how these things will perform in aggregate. And so actually having control the ent…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Brown: Locational grid strain will favor VPPs over central power plants
“There is going to continue to be, you know, more and more of a challenge that our system tries to struggle to grow to meet that demand, not just on the aggregate basis, But really on the distribution and locational basis, and I think that's also what's very un…”
Insight
Brown: Customer thermostat control drives higher demand response enrollment and retention
“When we first launched rush hour awards, 12 years ago, a lot of the intent there was to say, Hey, if we could prove out that customers with more control, the idea that they can always change the thermostat, adjust, always get to a different comfort set point i…”