>The US now has over 40GW of virtual power plant capacity, according to internal analysis by Wood Mackenzie. It's still relatively small compared to the roughly 600GW of natural gas and 200GW of coal, but a total of 160GW of capacity could be unlocked by 2030, according to a 2025 US Department of Energy report – equal to some 20% of the country's expected peak energy demand.
>Through GMP's programme, its virtual power plant has quietly become Vermont's biggest source of power. Now, the state is testing how far this "hidden" form of power can go.
Does anybody at the BBC actually understand what batteries are, and why they cannot possibly compete with power plants!?!?
Batteries compete with peaker plants for diurnal variance, but they can't replace peaker plants for seasonal variance. It's an interesting dynamic.
I think what he was saying is that with a peaker plant you have an extra source of power. So if you have a low wind/low irradiance period - you can rely on peaker to provide more power, but by this stage batteries are long gone.
Is that a local question for Vermont, a nation question for the US, or a global question?
If the question is global, then yes, there are, although as renewable energy has increased globally so has the need for peaker plants to handle the variance in the grid, thus plants that historically has only been used for seasonal variance are now used all year round to handle weather variance. An example of that is the oil power plant in south of Sweden.
Well you're probably right that this could reduce the amount of load coming from power plants during brownouts, but the article presents it as something that is going to protect against blackouts and I really can't imagine that working as a replacement for peaker plants. If you're in silicon valley or NYC you probably think of a blackout as something that happens once or twice a year for about 15 minutes but in a lot of the country blackouts are several hours or even days long and happen fairly frequently.
snickerbockers · · focus · HN ↗
>Through GMP's programme, its virtual power plant has quietly become Vermont's biggest source of power. Now, the state is testing how far this "hidden" form of power can go.
Does anybody at the BBC actually understand what batteries are, and why they cannot possibly compete with power plants!?!?
murkt · · focus · HN ↗
red75prime · · focus · HN ↗
hamandcheese · · focus · HN ↗
mono442 · · focus · HN ↗
entech · · focus · HN ↗
belorn · · focus · HN ↗
If the question is global, then yes, there are, although as renewable energy has increased globally so has the need for peaker plants to handle the variance in the grid, thus plants that historically has only been used for seasonal variance are now used all year round to handle weather variance. An example of that is the oil power plant in south of Sweden.
snickerbockers · · focus · HN ↗