virtual power plants
also referred to as: virtual power plant · vpp · vpps
19 statements across 10 episodes · 12 bullish · 3 bearish · 9 people on the record · first statement Jul 12, 2022 by Paul Lau · across every show →
Everything said about virtual power plants, oldest first
Jul 12, 2022 positive
Lau: SMUD offers $500–$2,500 incentives for virtual power plant battery enrollment
“Convince them to put batteries in and have them sign up for programs like Smite is doing right now, what we call the virtual power plant, that you offer them incentives to sign up if they have a batteries from, you know, some simply just say, hey, I am going t…”
Feb 8, 2023 positive
Spector: 88% of Sonnen's US batteries participate in virtual power plants
“Yeah, so Sonnen it was actually 88% of the batteries they've installed in the U.S. Are part of some sort of virtual power plant or grid, grid interactive program, which is just a wild statistic compared to the norm for the market where, you know, most people a…”
Mar 8, 2023 negative
Shah: US transformer backlog stems from avoiding VPPs, not actual shortages
“This is why we have a three-year backlog on distribution transformers. It's not because we have a shortage of distribution transformers in this country. It's because everybody wants to fix the problem using 19 eighties approaches instead of virtual power plant…”
May 1, 2023 bullish
Sep 21, 2023 positive
Nov 16, 2023 bullish
Bombay: VPPs will resolve localized grid bottlenecks within 5 to 10 years
“I think VPPs have quite a unique role to play in helping alleviating those very localized pain points. And we're not even there right now. We're just talking system wide capacity is pretty much like the limit as to how much VPPs have been able to contribute in…”
Jan 9, 2024 bearish
Feb 15, 2024 neutral
Feb 15, 2024 bullish
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.”
Feb 15, 2024 positive
Feb 15, 2024 neutral
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…”
Feb 15, 2024 negative
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”
Feb 15, 2024 neutral
Feb 15, 2024 bullish
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.”
Feb 15, 2024 bullish
Feb 15, 2024 positive
Feb 15, 2024 bullish
Jul 16, 2024 positive
Shah: Virtual power plants must be opt-out and fully automated to scale
“One, Everything needs to be opt out. This notion that we need to spend 700 dollars to, like, talk to people and beg them to opt into something is looney tunes. Like, when you hook up something, it's automatically opted into a VPP, and then we should give you a…”
Sep 4, 2024
Farooqi: Voluntary grid alerts lose impact without tangible financial incentives
“See, the problem with alerts is they only work a few times. Then it's like the, you know, the kid who cried wolf doesn't have an impact. You have to make it tangible by giving them a monetary payment or charging a higher price.”