Applications: Stationary Energy Storage

Virtual Power Plants VPP Fundamentals on VPP

State of VPP

Definition: A Virtual Power Plant (VPP) is created by a entity that coordinates the charging and discharging of many small, distributed energy resources DER, like residential or commercial batteries, but also EVs, thermostats and others) to act as one large battery resource on the grid.

Market State - NA The US reached 37.5 GWh of VPP in 2025 (including batteries and other DER, 61% of the deployments are based on batteries and EVs. Sunrun operates one of the largest VPP with 375 MW / 75,000 home batteries. PG&E to use residential storages based VPP for proactive load shaping, contrasting to former peak shaving interventions, and plans with 412 MW total VPP power in 2025. The implementation of FERC Order No 2222 by the different RTO/ISOs is supposed to further drive VPP growth.

Benefits: Coordinators manage these third-party owned assets, compensating the owners so the collective fleet can participate in larger-scale markets, such as ancillary service markets, that individual, smaller assets cannot access. Additionally, VPPs can be deployed faster to support grid congestion compared to utility scale assets. Challenges: The success of VPPs is highly dependent on supportive regulatory, policy, and market rules. But also the availability of the right hardware in the infrastructure like smart meters. Additionally, the right communication protocols are need to avoid stranded assets.

Market State - EU The largest players are Next Kraftwerk with 12.7 GW and Statkraft with more than 10 GW (both including all DER. In the UK, the implementation of BSC Amendment P415 (operational since Nov 25) facilitates the entry of “virtual trading partiesˮ to drive VPP growth. VPP with Utility BESS: Also large scale utility BESS are aggregated into virtual batteries to enable wider access without the hurle of ownership.

Source: RMI, Utility Drive, Codibly, Openadr,RMI, Electrek,Electrek, Latitude media, Latitude media, FERC, Enel, Next Kraftwerk, Statkraft, Zoeees, terralayr

Extracted from the PDF; charts and images may read imperfectly.