Electric school buses in the US could be turned into a virtual power plant (VPP) resource, through a new partnership between student transport supplier Zum Services and artificial intelligence-driven distributed energy software company AutoGrid.
Texas’ ERCOT market has been one of the US’ fastest-growing regions for renewable energy, but recent weather-driven events have made it clear that more needs to be done to ensure electricity system reliability. The answers are already here, affordable and practical, argues Wayne Muncaster, vice-president at commercial demand response platform technology group GridBeyond.
A residential virtual power plant (VPP) programme in Maryland has received regulatory approvals, enabling a partnership between technology provider Sunverge and utility Delmarva Power to get started on the project.
New software that helps businesses and utilities in the US to assess the value of energy storage has been launched by Sandia National Laboratories, while the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has launched its own platform for calculating the value of distributed energy resources (DERs).
Battery energy storage system (BESS) and controls technology will be provided to a “smart industrial park” project in Thailand by Hitachi ABB Power Grids.
US power and energy infrastructure developer, investor and operator LS Power has bought up GI Energy, a provider of clean energy solutions for commercial and industrial (C&I) customers with projects spanning the east and west coasts.
Energy storage developer Convergent Energy + Power has signed a long-term agreement with grocery store chain Tops Friendly Market for three large-scale community solar-plus-storage facilities in upstate New York.
In the first part of this interview with Swell Energy CEO Suleman Khan we heard about how Swell Energy has been working to ‘productise’ the virtual power plant proposition: making it attractive to utilities and to their end-customers and then wrapping that into a long-term agreement. This time out, we speak to Suleman about some of the finer details of the VPP proposition and where he thinks the market is heading.
As society moves away from centralised fossil fuel generators to increasing shares of distributed renewable energy resources, the idea that customers’ homes could become host to virtual power plants (VPPs), joining the dots between electricity supply and demand across the grid, has gradually gathered traction. Andy Colthorpe speaks with Suleman Khan CEO of Swell Energy, which has raised nearly half a billion dollars in financing for solar-plus-storage VPPs in 14,000 homes across California, New York and Hawaii.
How do electric grids that were state-of-the-art in the 19th Century remain stable and resilient through 21st Century climate disasters and other problems? They don’t, says Catherine Von Burg, CEO and co-founder of distributed battery energy storage company SimpliPhi Power – but giving people the power to be independent can be a solution fit for the future.
