“Virtual Power Plant”: Is This The Future Of Energy?
The world is moving towards energy efficiency and renewable energy. Considering this growing awareness around environmental protection, India has set a target of achieving 175GW renewable energy by 2022. The Virtual Power Plant (VPP) will aid in achieving this goal substantially.
A VPP is a cloud-based/virtual system, which aggregates heterogeneous energy resources in one place. The ecosystem consists of solar plants, battery storage systems, wind turbines, electric vehicle charging stations, demand and response management centers, and smart meters.
Power utilities, renewable energy operators, energy producers and retailers, VPP operators, and building managers are some of the key stakeholders involved. This system functions for power generation, intra and inter electricity trade, sale and purchase of power in the market.
In simple words, VPP is to a traditional energy plant what the internet-connected desktop computers are to the mainframe computer. Both can perform advanced computing tasks, but VPP can also perform energy management functions.
The brain of the Virtual Power Plant is in the main control system, which is supported by the much spoken about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT).
