Virtual power plants could help us address our very real energy challenges.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty Carrino.

Demand for electricity is growing, thanks to power-hungry AI data centers, electric cars and extreme weather.

Now some utilities are turning to a short-term solution to reduce strain on the grid, a concept called virtual power plants. These aren't

facilities at all. They're more of a network that aggregates unneeded electricity from a bunch

of different sources, like a business or a home, which essentially give back some energy to the

grid. I spoke with Daniel Cohen, professor of civil and environmental

engineering at Rice University, about how these virtual power plants often draw from regular

consumer tech. We see utilities in different parts of the country turning to customers in different

ways. Some of them are having their customers have adjustable thermostats,

where the company or the grid can control just how much the air conditioner or the heating

is operating and to be more flexible in the air conditioning and heating use. Others are looking to homes that have rooftop solar and battery

systems that they can adjust how that rooftop solar energy gets sent back to the grid by adjusting

the use of the batteries. Others are turning to smart vehicle chargers that instead of charging a

vehicle right away, can decide

when to charge up a vehicle so that it's charging at times that are easiest for the grid to supply.

And what are the advantages of virtual power plants?

Well, the country faces a real challenge in that our power demand is growing very quickly.

Our economy is growing. There's increasing

number of data centers and AI operations, and all of this is driving up demand. At the same time,

the main growing sources of supply in this country are wind and solar, which generate at specific times of the day that

aren't so controllable. And so there's a need to have more control over when we get supply and

...