Virtual power plant field experiment using 10 micro-CHP units at consumer premises

It is expected that mu-CHP units in households will penetrate the market in the Netherlands at high speed in the coming few years. As a result, the consuming households will then also produce electricity, which makes them suitable for local management of the grid. Using ICT, the mu-CHPs can be clustered in a virtual power plant (VPP). One application of such a VPP is the reduction of peak loads in the local substation by shifting the mu-CHP operation to moments when there is a large demand in electricity. In a field test conducted by ECN and Gasunie, it was found that a cluster of 10 households, each equipped with a mu-CHP is able to reduce the substation peak load with 30-50% without infringement of the user comfort.