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- Introducing our Virtual Power Plant
Introducing our Virtual Power Plant
We’re delighted to announce the launch of our Virtual Power Plant (VPP), which means you can get paid to help balance the grid.
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Virtual power plants are a smart way for solar homes in the UK to earn additional cash, while also helping to balance the grid.
Here’s a bit of detail about how they work, as well as all the key info about our very own Virtual Power Plant - including how much you could expect to earn.
What is a virtual power plant?
A virtual power plant brings together multiple small renewable energy generators, batteries, and/or pieces of smart technology into one network.
This can include households and businesses with solar & battery systems, wind turbines, or electric vehicle chargers.
Like a traditional power plant, this network produces energy every day and can adjust how much it’s providing to the grid at any given time.
But unlike a traditional power plant, it doesn’t have a single, physical presence, and instead consists of multiple locations dotted all over the country, connected online.
By combining together, the members of a virtual power plant are able to trade their service with the grid in a way that they couldn’t do on their own.
The technology helps to balance the grid, and it also enables cheaper, safer grid expansion in the long term.
How does it work?
One residential battery on its own is not going to be of much use to the grid, but many batteries connected together can make a difference.
And the larger the network, the more valuable it becomes.
The grid can use this capacity to balance UK energy demands, and then pay everyone involved for the privilege.
When you sign up for a virtual power plant, you lose control over when your battery charges and discharges, but you gain access to an additional source of income.
Many virtual power plants (like ours) are driven by smart algorithms designed to maximise your earnings.
These look to charge your battery when energy is cheapest (off-peak), then export power during times of high demand, helping the grid and earning you more.
Get paid to balance the grid with Sunsave
Sunsave Plus customers can now join our Virtual Power Plant.
We connect Sunsave solar & battery systems into a network that helps keep the UK grid balanced. In return, we get paid by the grid and distribute those payments to our members.
Because grid payments are new and hard to predict, we’ll guarantee you get £15 every month for the next 12 months. Your payments will continue after that, but we can’t say no how big they’ll be.
However, as our network grows in size and virtual power plants become more valuable, we expect the payments to increase.
Membership is free and you can leave at any time.
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Written byJosh Jackman
Josh has written about the rapid rise of home solar for the past six years. His data-driven work has been featured in United Nations and World Health Organisation documents, as well as publications including The Eco Experts, Financial Times, The Independent, The Telegraph, The Times, and The Sun. Josh has also been interviewed as a renewables expert on BBC One’s Rip-Off Britain, ITV1’s Tonight show, and BBC Radio 4 and 5.