Days earlier, NRG Energy, a big American utility, announced the purchase of CPower, a pioneer in “virtual power plants”. Because VPPs aggregate and manage many small dispersed sources of electricity (like the micropower devices Mercury will connect) to act as one large power plant, they can help balance supply and demand remotely. CPower’s micropower units together produce over 6 gigawatts (GW), as much peak power as six nuclear plants.
When power grids approach peak demand and big generators cannot cope, VPPs can ease that crunch by harnessing distributed power. In Australia, Tesla is connecting 50,000 homes with solar panels and big batteries to form the world’s biggest VPP. Next Kraftwerke has stitched together thousands of biogas facilities, hydropower plants and solar units in Germany to operate flexibly and so take advantage of price spikes on electricity markets.#经济学人 #英语学习 #可再生能源发电 #绿色能源转型 #电力
When power grids approach peak demand and big generators cannot cope, VPPs can ease that crunch by harnessing distributed power. In Australia, Tesla is connecting 50,000 homes with solar panels and big batteries to form the world’s biggest VPP. Next Kraftwerke has stitched together thousands of biogas facilities, hydropower plants and solar units in Germany to operate flexibly and so take advantage of price spikes on electricity markets.#经济学人 #英语学习 #可再生能源发电 #绿色能源转型 #电力
