By Nicolás Rivero and Niko Kommenda
September 24, 2024
Washington Post Excerpt:
HOUSTON — Last September, in the final days of what was then the hottest summer in human history, scorching temperatures threatened to knock out the Texas power grid.
As air conditioners around the state strained to keep homes and businesses cool in 100-plus-degree heat, the state’s grid operator declared an energy emergency, asking all Texans to save electricity between 6 and 9 p.m.
Ada Garcia, a Houston homeowner, didn’t have to touch her thermostat to pitch in. Her utility company remotely shut off her air conditioner nine times that day as part of a power-saving strategy that is already propping up grids around the country as they deal with booming demand and a growing share of unpredictable wind and solar power.
Garcia, who was working in her home office, had no idea that Texas was teetering on the edge of an energy crisis that evening or that Octopus Energy, her power company, was waging a battle in her living room to save the grid. But these small adjustments to her thermostat saved about 10 kilowatt-hours of electricity, which is enough to wash about 20 loads of laundry.
“I never really notice when they change the thermostat,” said Garcia, who signed up for the energy-saving program in exchange for a discount on her monthly power bill.
Around the state of Texas, Octopus and other power companies raised thermostats, paused electric car chargers and tapped into home batteries in thousands more of their customers’ homes. They also paid stores, data centers and office towers to shut off lights and air conditioners and slow down their computers.
All told, Texas utilities made 2.6 gigawatts of electricity demand disappear in the critical moments when the grid was in crisis — the equivalent of a large nuclear power plant.
That’s why programs like this one are called “virtual power plants.”
Experts say they will be crucial for helping the United States clean up the electric grid without facing blackouts — and without waiting years for new power plants and transmission lines to go through permitting and construction.
“They can be deployed very quickly using [devices] that are already in people’s garages or on people’s rooftops or in people’s basements,” said Mark Dyson, a managing director in the electricity program at the clean energy think tank RMI.
Power grids across the country are straining to keep up with demand as new data centers and factories sprout up and more drivers plug in electric cars. Meanwhile, supply is becoming less predictable as power companies replace polluting fossil fuel plants with wind turbines and solar panels that only make electricity when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining.
Tripling the current capacity of virtual power plants by 2030 would help the U.S. grid meet rising electricity demand in a faster, cheaper, and cleaner way than just building new power plants, according to a recent report from the Energy Department. But for that to happen, millions more people would have to give companies power to fiddle with their thermostats and appliances.
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The other challenge is convincing people to give electric utilities and tech companies control over their homes. Any company that runs a virtual power plant has to be careful not to futz with peoples’ devices so much that they get fed up and quit.
“You can find a lot of really passionately pissed off people in summer events where they’ve had back-to-back [thermostat adjustments] without a fair exchange of value,” said Donald McPhail, vice president of product at the grid software developer Uplight.
One way to address this is to give customers more control over how they participate. Octopus Energy, for instance, agrees not to let customers’ homes rise above a maximum temperature they choose, and it guarantees their cars will be fully charged by a time they pick. Customers can override the automatic shutdowns any time, but Octopus says fewer than five percent of them do.
“We recognize how sacred the thermostat and the AC is in Texas,” said Daniel Kirwin, a product manager for the Octopus Energy virtual power plant. “We don’t want to be intrusive if we do not have to.”
Another strategy is to give customers big discounts and remind them that they’re contributing to the greater good.
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Thermostats are just the beginning. As Americans buy millions of smart appliances, solar panels, home batteries and electric cars, power companies are expanding their virtual power plants to include more gadgets.
“The numbers are so big that if even a fraction of smart device owners choose to enroll in virtual power plants, the … growth potential is very high,” said Jennifer Downing, an engagement officer in the Energy Department’s Loan Programs Office.
If the trend continues, there may be a lot more homes that look like Nick and Alma Nicoletti’s house in Katy, a Houston suburb.
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Related:
Flashback 2008: NYT: California Seeks Home Thermostat Control – Excerpt: The conceit in the 1960s show “The Outer Limits” was that outside forces had taken control of your television set. California, state regulators are likely to have the emergency power to control individual thermostats, sending temperatures up or down through a radio-controlled device.
Flashback 2009: Eco-Nanny Pelosi: ‘Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory’
