Dive Brief:

• Platte River Power Authority, a public power utility in Colorado, is partnering with EnergyHub to design and deploy a virtual power plant to provide dispatchable power to support an increasingly renewable portfolio, Platte River said in a release last week.
• “We expect the VPP to be a significant resource,” said Maia Jackson, supervisor of communications for Platte River, in an email to Utility Dive. 
• The first VPP program is planned to launch in late summer and will focus on smart thermostats, the utility said in its release, with EV charge management launching later this year. “These offerings will be available through Efficiency Works, the long-standing collaboration between Platte River and the owner communities, that helps residential and commercial customers use energy effectively through assessments, programs and product rebates,” Platte River said.

Dive Insight:

The ultimate size of the VPP will depend on the “success and cost effectiveness of our programs, which relies on our vendors, their device partners and the response from customers,” Jackson said. However, Platte River plans to achieve 19 MW from customer distributed energy resources by 2030, plus 20 MW from four 5-MW batteries it plans to place in owner communities, she added.

Platte River provides electricity to the utilities serving the Estes Park, Fort Collins, Longmont and Loveland communities in Colorado. “Platte River has long planned for a VPP as part of its strategy to provide [dispatchable power],” the utility said. “While Platte River and EnergyHub signed a formal agreement earlier this month, the teams — along with staff from the owner communities — have been working together since last year to develop the first VPP programs.”

EnergyHub’s platform allows utilities to enroll DERs such as thermostats, EVs and batteries in VPPs and manage them to create grid flexibility, the release said. EnergyHub will also provide an “edge” distributed energy resource management system – software “that tracks energy demand across thermostats, EVs, and batteries, enables customers’ devices to respond to utility signals, and connects behind-the-meter DERs to the wider grid and energy markets.”

“The VPP is one of three forms of dispatchable capacity that is part of our current plans to decarbonize the owner communities’ electric supply by over 80% and to meet the Clean Energy Plan filed with the state,” Jackson said. “Dispatchable capacity in the form of the VPP as well as battery storage and aeroderivative turbines support the reliability and financial sustainability of an electric supply that is increasingly noncarbon and nondispatchable (i.e., wind and solar).”