California’s virtual power plant program prevented blackouts and reliance on fossil fuels. Now its future is in jeopardy.

VPPs are great, and the have high hopes for their use for increasingly granular grid support (deep into distribution network, where it’ll soon be needed as electrification continues).

Worthy to note though, the DSGS run by the CPUC/CEC is nothing much more advanced that classic demand response. Look up FPL, who has access to direct load control of nearly 1 million air conditioners for regional demand response via a program called On Call (note: this “VPP” has been around for decades).

These are effective programs to mitigate grid instability (supply shortfall) during contingency events. But Id argue that any grid operator who relies on these programs to “prevent blackouts” (not really true for the DSGS program btw) should is doing a poor job managing reserve margins.

I looked at PV Magazine as a very credible source for industry news, but it has degraded into buzzword headlines and half-truths. I’ll stick with Utility Dive, Canary Media and the like