As more and more residential power customers add solar power to their roofs and batteries to their cellars, it becomes more practical to link them up and create local Virtual Power Plants, to aid in the drive to net zero.
Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) has a target of 2030 for its Zero Carbon Plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from its power supply. It has entered into an agreement with Swell Energy to create a residential VPP. Swell will act as the aggregator for SMUD’s new 'My Energy Optimizer Partner+' program. SMUD said it currently has about 600 customer-sited energy storage systems with another 400 systems in the interconnection process and thousands more projected over the next few years.
This virtual power plant program is one of the most advanced initiatives underway in California to aggregate residential solar and battery storage systems, in a centralized manner, to reduce carbon emissions.
In Texas, Tesla is starting a pilot scheme which will allow residential customers with their Powerwall battery system to sell surplus electricity back to the grid. Those who register with the new Tesla Electric service will join an automated system that sells energy from owners’ Powerwalls to the grid and receives it when the prices are most favorable. When users are drawing from the grid, Tesla will provide offsets from renewable energy sources to reduce emissions.
This is just one of Tesla's ambitious schemes to create VPPs all over the world. These include projects like a 250-megawatt one in Australia constructed in 2018. Another VPP in Japan, which Tesla started building in 2021, is powering homes on the island of Miyako-jima using more than 300 Powerwalls.
It looks like local VPPs will become commonplace with the costs of solar panels coming down and electricity prices being high, making these more financially viable for the average home owner.