Top Innovators
Ryan Murphy and Laurent Sayer represent the Virtual Power Plant Software Platform at Puget Sound Energy.
PUF's Lori Burkhart: Describe the innovation that led to your team winning the Maria Telkes Top Innovator Award for Distributed Energy, how it works, and its benefits to Puget Sound Energy.
Ryan Murphy: A Virtual Power Plant is a software platform that acts like an aggregator of distributed energy resources, making it possible for utilities like PSE to forecast, control, and readily dispatch consumer-owned resources like battery storage systems and demand response programs within our service area. Through the implementation and usage of the VPP, PSE will gain a better understanding of which DERs are the most reliable and effective at delivering results to support our clean energy goals.
Laurent Sayer: Over the last couple of years PSE implemented a Virtual Power Plant. The VPP helps coordinate the use of distributed energy resources during peak load hours.
DERs can be thermostats, battery systems, building energy management systems, electric vehicle chargers, all types of appliances, which when pooled together can be called upon to help reduce load by hundreds of megawatts. It is similar to starting a traditional generation power plant when you need more power.
PUF: What was your role in the innovation's development?