Jigar Shah sees virtual power plants as the fastest way for states to stabilize electric bills

Jigar Shah, the former director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs office, maintains that scaling virtual power plants is the quickest way for state leaders to stabilize electric rates, in a report he co-authored with Deploy Action Executive Director Arnab Pal, published by Deploy Action.

The report, which describes virtual power plants as aggregations of distributed energy resources such as electric vehicles, distributed batteries and smart thermostats, says they can be deployed “within months, not years.” VPPs can shift some electricity consumption to non-peak hours, and a VPP’s batteries can help serve remaining peak demand. As a result, there is less need for costly new generating capacity.

The report cites a virtual power plant “liftoff” study, published by the U.S. Department of Energy, which found that scaling VPPs three to five times by 2030 to reach 80 to 100 GW of enrolled capacity could serve 10% to 20% of peak load and save power systems $10 billion per year. Shah presented those findings at the 2023 RE+ conference.