DOE suggests the country should triple the scale of VPPs by 2030 to address rapidly increasing peak demand for electricity at a lower cost than adding conventional generation resources. VPPs aggregate and orchestrate DERs like batteries, solar, EVs and smart thermostats to balance supply and demand of electricity and provide other grid services that a conventional power plant typically would. Unlike a conventional power plant, utilities don’t have to pay the capital costs of DERs and they sidestep land requirements and transmission interconnection queues. By relying more on VPPs, utilities could save roughly $10 billion in annual spending.

This playbook explores how next-generation VPPs promise to deliver much greater value to grid operators, planners, DER owners and decarbonization efforts. They will enable DERs to provide a broader set of generation and distribution services to the grid because of improvements to three foundational capabilities: 

• Visibility
• Predictability
• Granular Control

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