This report provides an overall evaluation of ARENA’s VPP portfolio in terms of the value provided to ARENA’s stakeholders and the energy industry more generally and to identify lessons learned which may be applied to future programs.
Report extract
As the penetration of renewable energy continues to make inroads into Australia’s energy system, novel ways to manage the delivery of secure, affordable, sustainable and reliable electricity are required. Australia has embarked on a distributed energy transformation where distributed energy resources (DER) could provide 13% to 22% of total underlying annual new energy consumption by 2040. The challenge remains on how to maximise the benefits to consumers who invest in DER technologies whilst ensuring the power system remains secure, reliable and affordable for all consumers.
Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) are being developed with support from ARENA to meet this need. VPPs an aggregation of resources (such as decentralised generation, storage and controllable loads) coordinated to deliver services for power system operations and electricity markets, traditionally provided by centralised power plants.