Dive Brief:
- EnergyHub, which provides software for managing distributed energy assets, has released two tools for virtual power plant developers, operators and users: a testing framework to compare their performance to traditional generators and a five-level “maturity model” to address capability gaps.
- Named after an EnergyHub data scientist and inspired by the Turing test for artificial intelligence, the “Huels test” asks whether a grid operator can distinguish a gas peaker plant from a VPP based on their operational characteristics. To pass, the VPP must match the visibility, “schedulability” and availability of the peaker plant, EnergyHub says.
- The VPP maturity model spans manually-scheduled demand response events (Level 0) to “grid-adaptive VPPs” (Level 4) that continually and autonomously adjust to meet multiple objectives on transmission and distribution grids. Paul Hines, EnergyHub’s vice president of power systems, said in an interview that Level 4 VPPs could be ready for commercial deployment in “years, not decades.”
Dive Insight:
Hines said the efficiency provided by VPPs is needed as demand grows from electrification and new large loads, including data centers.
“There is enormous need for new capacity of every sort,” particularly in regions favored by data centers, such as the PJM Interconnection, Hines said.
Hines said VPPs will play a crucial role by offsetting seasonal and annual peaks more cost-effectively than traditional generators — if they’re reliable enough for grid operators to trust.
“If we want VPPs to be a real-world source of grid capacity, they need to act as a replacement for traditional generation,” he said.
VPPs have come a long way since the early days of the manual demand response programs EnergyHub classifies as Level 0, and grid operators like PJM already consider “demand resources” more reliable than certain thermal generators during peak demand periods. But Hines said they’re not yet capable of passing the Huels test.
To pass that test and demonstrate parity with gas peakers, EnergyHub said VPPs need to meet three requirements. They must deliver accurate telemetry at intervals under five minutes directly to the utility control room; they must follow complex schedules to meet grid needs by building load before an event, accurately flattening load for the event’s duration and gradually recovering after the event to avoid sudden load surges; they must be available year-round for at least four to six hours at a time.
EnergyHub’s maturity model lays out the specific capabilities that enable VPPs to pass the Huels test, such as data accuracy and frequency, seasonal availability, integration with utility operations, locational and system-wide forecasting and dispatch, and degree of automation.
Level 0 and 1 resources are available for no more than 20 events each year, must be manually scheduled an hour or more in advance and require “all-call” participation that reduces their usefulness for dynamic grid management. They deliver $55/kW to $65/kW in combined value for grids and customers, EnergyHub estimates.
In contrast, Level 2 resources are partially autonomous, capable of integrating into centralized economic dispatch unit commitment systems or self-dispatching based on signals like day-ahead market pricing, EnergyHub said.
It said a “Mid-Atlantic utility” demonstrated Level 2 performance in the real world — and offered “early evidence of passing the Huels test for simpler load profiles” — by maintaining a predictable and sustained load shape for three hours across consecutive dispatches of targeted groups of devices. EnergyHub pegs the value of that VPP at around $105/kW.
Hines said he has used the tool to evaluate EnergyHub’s own VPP platform and found it “pretty close to Level 2.”
“We are using this tool as a way to evaluate ourselves,” he said. “We want the entire industry to use it to be honest about where we are today and where we want to go.”
EnergyHub does bring more sophisticated capabilities to bear in managing specific distributed resources, such as advanced charging management for electric vehicles, but they’re not yet present “across the whole stack,” he added.
EnergyHub’s goal is to use its platform to achieve a multi-resource, Level 3 or 4 VPP that easily passes the Huels test and delivers $160/kW to $210/kW in combined value for grids and customers. With regulatory tweaks that support utility spending on VPPs — as opposed to more capital-intensive infrastructure investments — and continued hardware and software improvements, Hines said it could come sooner than some expect.
“It won’t happen overnight — these things take time — but it’s coming in a small number of years, not decades,” he said.
