How Can Virtual Power Plants Benefit the Electric Power Grid?

VPPs-PowerMag.com-Sally Jacquemin
VPPs-PowerMag.com-Sally Jacquemin

PowerMag.com (Sally Jacquemin):
“When DERs and other devices are logically grouped or aggregated, they can form a virtual power plant, or VPP, providing load flexibility for grids that are reaching capacity or economic value with energy market participation, like a traditional power plant.” VPP’s can help prevent current and future plans for adding on new generation plants and can be considered as a method for shrinking future “greenhouse gas emissions.

As power demand increases beyond current power plant capacities and clean energy goals are accelerated, power generation sources of the future will start to look different. In fact, some of these new components—rooftop solar, battery energy storage, electric vehicles and distributed energy resources (DERs)—can already be found in millions of homes.”

READ More @ PowerMag.com (Sally Jacquemin)…

How Is the Major Heatwave Affecting the US Power Grid?

NERC-2024-Summer-Assessment

With the rising temperatures across most of the US and many cities experiencing over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, stresses the overall electric power grid. Power utilities are experiencing summer peaks in larger electric load demand by keeping up with consumers’ air conditioning units running around the clock.

The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), one of the nation’s largest utilities, provides electricity across a 7-state region (80,000 square miles) in the Southeast for over 10 million users. TVA has a total generation capacity of 32 gigawatts (GW) with the option to purchase and wheel additional GWs to customers from neighboring utilities. In the past, TVA has experienced winter peak load demands that created system disturbances that resulted in temporary and very short rolling blackouts in some cities/areas to maintain power grid reliability. Temporary load shedding outages were necessary for balancing the system generation capacity with the excessive peak load demand by ultimately protecting the integrity of its entire electric network. Continue Reading…

Moving forward, TVA has spent millions in power grid improvements and efficiency upgrades to support increases in future peak load demand. TVA’s integrated resource plan (IRP) will focus on continued grid improvements with plans to add up to 10 GWs of solar renewable power generation by 2035. Continue Reading…

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) released its “2024 Summer Reliability Assessment, “ May 2024, detailing and “identifying areas of concern” for the nations North American power grid during extreme summer conditions. NERC named power regions/entities that may experience power generation capacity shortages during summer peak load demands. Continue Reading…

Power Regulators Warning Power Grids Vulnerable This Winter

Winter-Power-Outages
Photo by Insaug.com

A recent NPR article warns that much of the nation’s power grid is vulnerable to the winter threat approaching with major winter storms that could cause power outages and power shortages potentially affecting over 60% of US and Canada.

“North America’s power grid is vulnerable…People living in Southwestern states are at particular risk.”

(Continue Reading at NPR.org…)