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Four ways virtual power plants can help the US grid… | Canary Media

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AUSTIN, Texas — America’s demand for electricity is growing for the first time in decades. Sprawling data centers are cropping up across the country to enable our hyperconnected digital lives and support emerging AI systems. The rise of electric vehicles and the switch to electric heat pumps and appliances are further fueling the nation’s need for electricity. Analysts say these trends will cause U.S. power demand to spike in the coming years. Yet the nation isn’t expanding clean energy nearly fast enough to keep pace with our power-hungry future in a sustainable way. One key solution, it turns out, is already well within reach: the virtual power plant. On March 9, at this year’s South by Southwest festival, I led a panel discussion on the increasingly urgent need for VPPs with Arshad Mansoor and Rudy Garza, two leading experts on the topic. A VPP is a network of small-scale distributed energy sources — such as solar-plus-battery systems, smart thermostats or electric vehicles — that a

In 2021, Winter Storm Uri brought record-low temperatures to the state, spurring a massive grid failure that left millions without heat or electricity for days. After that traumatic experience, residents and business owners are even more willing to adjust their power usage, especially if it means staving off another devastating blackout, according to Garza. “The grid is changing. You don’t just have a whole bunch of [power] generators sitting on the sidelines anymore,” he said. ​“So we have to figure out how to manage those extremes in a different way than we have in the past.” “We’ve got…

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