July 2024 HIGHLIGHTS
• The possibility of extreme and wide-spread heat waves puts large swaths of the country at elevated risk
for insufficient electricity generation to meet demand this summer. This risk is likely to grow if utility
projections of 38 GW of new peak load through 2028 materialize.
• Virtual power plants (VPPs), aggregations of distributed energy resources that provide utility-scale and
utility-grade grid services, can support utilities to affordably and reliably meet summer grid needs.
• VPPs are rapidly deployable, affordably leverage existing assets, are configurable and adaptable, and
enhance community resilience.
• Already-deployed VPPs will be dispatched to meet the peak this summer. New VPPs can be deployed in
as little as 6-12 months — much faster than traditional transmission and generation — to manage peak
as soon as 2025.
• Regulators and policymakers can leverage three key VPP policy principles to enable utilities and other
load-serving entities to efficiently deploy VPPs by next summer:
1. Advance policies to expand adoption of distributed energy resources (DERs) by diverse
end-users and ensure there is a sufficient asset base available for VPP enrollment.
2. Fairly compensate VPPs for services delivered to enable customer participation and allow
VPPS to fairly compete.
3. Enable value stacking to maximize benefits to the grid while maintaining customer buy-in and
support.
• More than 500 VPPs are currently operating nationwide. Utilities and regulators do not need to engage in
lengthy design, regulatory, or pilot processes to deploy VPPs to meet summer reliability needs. Instead,
decision makers should reference leading approaches from other jurisdictions.