Seth Frader-Thompson of EnergyHub highlights customer participation levels in Arizona Public Service's virtual power plant programs compared to national averages.
Opinion
Frader-Thompson: California energy regulators are lagging behind other states on VPPs
“The one thing is I would say if you're in California and you're a regulator, the rest of the country exists. And if you look at what's going on, there are lots of examples of how you could be doing this a lot better.”
Opinion
Frader-Thompson: Spending $20M on software before launching a VPP is backwards
“That is in contrast to some other plans that I've seen where we're saying like, let's build out twenty million dollars worth of software infrastructure before we even stand up a program, and that's backwards.”
Opinion
EnergyHub CEO: Level 2 thermostat VPPs provide peaker plant value
“Like, the smart thermostat programs are at a strong level two in general. And at level two, like I said before, they are clearly already providing the value that a peaker plant would provide.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Frader-Thompson: Tens of thousands of events prove VPPs are 99.9% reliable
“Like, I can show you data from literally tens of thousands of events showing that this thing is 99.9 plus percent reliable.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Frader-Thompson: VPPs will be dispatched hundreds of times per year
“Now it's a resource because of that repeatability that you can use operationally, and you can be confident that if you need to use it, you know, today I think maybe dozens of times per year, but moving toward hundreds of times per year, that repeatability just…”
Insight
Frader-Thompson: VPPs need roughly 50 MW to interest utility control rooms
“I think scale is the other thing, right? I mean, I think Stacy talks about there being a threshold like somewhere around 50 megawatts where, you know, you are actually at the scale of a, an individual beaker plant, and that's kind of the that's kind of the hur…”