EXCITING NEWS ABOUT VIRTUAL POWER PLANTS | The Verge

Please take time to read more details after these brief extracts   - "Virtual power plants take advantage of solar panels and batteries in private homes. People with those setups can sign up to send extra power back to the electrical grid in their area, giving it an extra boost during situations when it’s at risk of a blackout. The grid can use that power instead of pulling from the gas-fired power plants typically used when the power supply is strained.

The virtual power plant is based on a program at local energy utility in Miyako-jima, Miyakojima Mirai Energy Co, that installs solar panels and storage batteries at no cost. .  ." 

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Tesla quietly built a virtual power plant in Japan

There’s already one in California and Australia

By Nicole Wetsman  Aug 29, 2022, 10:53am EDT 

Tesla’s latest virtual power plant is in Japan. The company announced Friday that it has been quietly installing its Powerwall batteries at homes on the island Miyako-jima since 2021 and now has over 300 installed. It’s the largest commercial virtual power plant in Japan, according to the statement.

. . .Tesla already has virtual power plants operating in California and Australia and is working on getting one off the ground in Texas — where it sees an opportunity to add a new source of power to a perennially unreliable grid. In California, people with Powerwalls installed in their homes can get $2 for every kilowatt-hour fed back into the grid when it’s under stress during emergencies or periods of high demand. . .Tesla said it plans to have 400 Powerwall units installed by the end of the year and 600 units by the end of 2023. The company then plans to expand to the rest of the Okinawa prefecture, which covers the constellation of islands stretching between the Japanese mainland and Taiwan.

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Tesla’s virtual power plant had its first event helping the grid – looks like the future

1 week ago 

Tesla’s virtual power plant had its first event helping the grid – looks like the future

Fred Lambert

- Aug. 18th 2022 2:58 am PT

@FredericLambert

Tesla’s virtual power plant in California had its first emergency response event helping the grid by pooling power from Powerwall owners around the state. The event appears to have been a success as the distributed power plant looks like the future.

A virtual power plant (VPP) consists of distributed energy storage systems, like Tesla Powerwalls, used in concert to provide grid services and avoid the use of polluting and expensive peaker power plants.

Last year, Tesla launched a VPP pilot program in California, where Powerwall owners would join in voluntarily without compensation to let the VPP pull power from their battery packs when the grid needed it.

It helped Tesla prove the usefulness of such a system.

Following the pilot program, Tesla and PG&E, the electric utility covering Northern California, launched the first official virtual power plant through the Tesla app in June.

This new version of the Tesla Virtual Power Plant actually compensates Powerwall owners $2 per kWh that they contribute to the grid during emergency load reduction events. Homeowners are expected to get between $10 and $60 per event.

Earlier this week, we reported that Tesla’s California VPP expanded to Southern California Edison (SCE) to now cover most of the state.

Just days later, the Tesla VPP had its first emergency response event. Tesla reached out to Powerwall owners who opted in the program through its app yesterday to warn them of the event and give them the option to opt-out if they needed all the power from their Powerwalls today:

It looks like 2,342 Powerwall owners participated in the event on the PG&E network and 268 homes on the SCE grid.

For PG&E, Tesla’s VPP was outputting as much as 16 MW of power at one point during the event – acting as a small distributed power plant.