GM, Ford, Google collaborate to promote "virtual" power plants

According to foreign media reports, companies including General Motors, Ford, Google and solar manufacturers said on January 10 that they would cooperate to establish standards for expanding the use of virtual power plants (VPPs), a system that can alleviate the power grid when power supply is insufficient. load.

Energy transition nonprofit RMI will host the initiative, the Virtual Power Plant Partnership (VP3), which also aims to develop policies to promote the adoption of the system, several companies said. Virtual power plants bring together thousands of distributed energy resources, such as electric vehicles or electric heaters controlled by smart thermostats.

With the customer's consent, the system can use advanced software to respond to power shortages, such as switching thousands of homes' batteries (such as those in electric cars) from charging to discharging mode, or allowing water heaters, etc. to be used. Electrical equipment reduces power.

Image source: GM

VPPs are set to explode in the U.S. after the country passed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2021, which provides or expands tax incentives for electric vehicles, electric water heaters, solar panels and other equipment to reduce costs on the grid. load.

RMI estimates that VPPs could reduce peak electricity demand in the United States by 60 gigawatts by 2030, equivalent to the average consumption of 50 million households, and by more than 200 gigawatts by 2050.

Rob Threlkeld, GM's director of global energy strategy, said VP3 will be able to "show that electric vehicles can be a reliable asset for retail utilities or retail transmission operators, but also for homeowners and fleet customers."

In countries such as Germany and Australia, as well as some U.S. states, VPPs have improved grid reliability. During last August’s extreme heat, energy wholesaler California Independent System Operators avoided widespread blackouts by calling on all available resources, including VPPs, to dispatch power. Google's Nest smart thermostat also contributes to load relief.