Virtual power plants (VPPs) are “well past pilot scale” in North America, with 33 GW of capacity operating or in development across 1,459 deployments participating in 321 market, utility and retailer programs. However, enrolled VPP capacity accounts for only 19.5% of total distributed energy resource capacity. The North America Virtual Power Plant Market 2024 report suggests a combination of effective program design, supportive state and federal policy, reduced barriers to wholesale market participation, and wider adoption of home energy management technologies. The report also highlighted challenges around market access, particularly for residential customers. It highlighted nodal aggregation restrictions that limit the potential size of individual VPP aggregations, poorly defined bidding and qualification rules, device-level data restrictions that increase telemetry costs for small-resource aggregations and state regulatory barriers to grid export compensation. Recent state policy developments could improve market access for customers and expand opportunities for VPPs.
Solar Dominates US Energy Capacity Growth
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has published data showing that solar accounted for over 75% of US electrical generating
