See on Scoop.it – Green Energy Technologies & Development
Today’s global energy market is in the midst of a paradigm shift, from a model dominated by large centralized power plants owned by big utilities to a mixed bag of so-called distributed energy generation facilities — smaller residential, commercial…
>Virtual Power Plants
One distributed generation technology with significant growth potential is the virtual power plant (VPP). In the VPP model an energy aggregator gathers a portfolio of smaller generators and operates them as a unified and flexible resource on the energy market or sells their power as system reserve.
VPPs are designed to maximize asset owners’ profits while also balancing the grid. They can match load fluctuations through forecasting, advance metering and computerized control, and can perform real-time optimization of energy resources.
"Virtual power plants essentially represent an ‘Internet of Energy,’ tapping existing grid networks to tailor electricity supply and demand services for a customer," said Navigant senior analyst Peter Asmus in a market report. The VPP market will grow from less than US $1 billion per year in 2013 to $3.6 billion per year by 2020, according to Navigant’s research — and one reason is that with more variable renewables on the grid flexibility and demand response are becoming more crucial.
Asmus called VPPs "an ideal optimization platform for the coming transformation of the power grid," adding that both supply and demand flexibility will be increasingly necessary to accommodate fast ramping periods and address corresponding supply forecast errors.<
See on www.renewableenergyworld.com
duanetilden 
Won’t virtual power plants end up concentrating control in a few hands?
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Thoughtful response Tammi. In a sense I see that it will, on the other hand, is this not already the case? VPP’s will allow smaller, renewable energy sources (and other’s) to be brought together and used as a single organised resource. There are bound to be problems, however, we are already dealing with virtual trading of carbon credit’s and offsets, so this is likely inevitable.
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