Virtual power plant capabilities expands through US-based partnership

California’s Swell Energy and Hawai’i-headquartered Shifted Energy are partnering to improve Virtual Power Plant (VPP) capabilities.

The partnership aims to address the increasing demand for efficient energy solutions in markets dealing with changing landscapes, aging grids, and extreme weather events.

With VPPs becoming essential to the grid, the joint effort broadens the scope of distributed energy resources (DERs) and devices incorporated into their VPPs.

The collaboration integrates Shifted’s Grid Maestro distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) with Swell’s DERMS GridAmp, in the hopes of forming a comprehensive VPP solution for utilities.

This offering, compatible with existing SCADA platforms, delivers accurate energy forecasts for various customer-sited DERs, devices and appliances. The alliance utilises AI learning and decisioning to optimise the interaction of customer-sited assets with the grid, improving functionality.

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“As households increasingly electrify and adopt devices requiring energy orchestration, the software required to co-optimise the operations of solar panels, home batteries, EV chargers and smart appliances has to converge,” explained Suleman Khan, CEO of Swell Energy, in a release.

“Through this partnership, Shifted and Swell are facilitating data-driven operations across the electrified home to enhance customer economics while benefiting grid operations for utilities.”

“In addition to combining technological capabilities, our alliance with Swell will unite our complementary approaches to market entry and expansion, increasing the distribution of a range of energy solutions,” added Forest Frizzell, co-founder and CEO of Shifted Energy.

Supported by VPP contracts with utilities in the US and Canada, the collaboration expands offerings and market presence.

The companies have also combined efforts to pursue future utility engagements together, submitting fully integrated capabilities to utilities interested in harnessing customer-sited energy generation, storage and household loads in a “fungible and standardised manner across thousands of homes,” state the partners in a joint-issued release.

Stated in the release: “As a result, the partnership enables utilities to build large DER aggregations, gain greater DER visibility, deliver enhanced load flexibility and provide other grid services.”