How Virtual Power Plants Could Help California
Virtual power plants could be one of the solutions to California’s ongoing power outage woes. The idea is to connect homes that have solar panels on the roof, as well as batteries that store the electricity, so that power can be captured and redirected to where it’s needed most. Even electric vehicles can be plugged in and utilized for this purpose.
Developing Virtual Power Plants
Startup company OhmConnect is developing the technology, and in fact the company already operates a business model that pays customers to save energy at key moments to avoid blackouts. For example, in August 2020 the company paid its customers to reduce their energy usage for 1 hour, resulting in the equivalent of 600k homes temporarily taken off the grid.
It works by encouraging customers to sign up for a free service that periodically sends a text message asking them to save energy for a small period of time. When they voluntarily do this, OhmConnect provides them with a utility-funded credit based on what they would have used.
And now the company’s technology is about to go on steroids. The company has received a $100 million cash infusion from Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, a spinoff of Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs, to ramp up its solution. The funding will be used to build the “Resi-Station,” which will be the largest virtual plant in North America, encompassing 550 MW.
Aside from the OhmConnect / Sidewalk initiative, virtual power plants are popping up with increasing velocity, as they are seen as a solution to help improve reliability and resiliency. One of the first virtual plants in the U.S. involved an entire neighborhood in Arizona, which is being developed with solar panels and energy storage batteries for every home.
The bottom line is that anything that can help emergency preparedness through outage-avoidance is okay in my book! Virtual power plants are a great idea, and hopefully more and more of them will be developed over the next few years.
