SUSTAINABILITY
A BRIEF HISTORY OF VPPS
The concept of the virtual power plant is nearly three decades old. It was coined in 1997 by Dr Shimon Awerbuch, who first introduced it under the name“ virtual utility”.
For years, the idea was largely theoretical. Early academic work explored coordinating distributed energy resources to improve grid reliability, but limited technology and restrictive regulation kept deployment on paper rather than in practice.
That first changed in Germany. RWE launched what is widely considered the first working VPP in 2008, linking nine hydroelectric plants to deliver 8.6MW of capacity. Statkraft followed in 2012 with a VPP generating output equivalent to 10 nuclear reactors.
The US took a different route into VPPs, building on established demand response schemes rather than renewables aggregation, according to Uplight.
Today, the technology has matured considerably. Total aggregated VPP capacity worldwide has now passed roughly 35GW, with significant deployments across Germany, the US, Australia and China. Google’ s deal with Voltus is the latest chapter in that story, and the first time a hyperscaler has adopted the model at scale.
The BYOC structure inverts that logic. Here, essentially, is how it works:
1. Google funds the aggregation of third-party assets
2. Voltus orchestrates them and pays participating homes and businesses for their flexibility
3. When Google needs electricity, Voltus will evaluate how much the PJM grid is able to contribute
It is, in theory, a very simple and effective process. That said, Google is the first hyperscaler to sign onto the BYOC product with Voltus, marking a huge moment for the company and a huge vote of confidence for the technology.
“ This initial phase of our Google partnership is pioneering a model that large load customers can follow, and we expect it to accelerate the role of distributed energy resources as a capacity solution at scale,” says Dana Guernsey, Voltus’ CEO.
The broader context in the data centre sector The deal between the two firms comes at a time when the price of electricity is rising, reserve margins are shrinking and demand( especially from data centres) is skyrocketing. This is particularly the case for the PJM grid. Google is not alone in facing these pressures, though. Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are all up against the same interconnection bottlenecks and the same public pressure to reduce strain on the grid.
100 September 2026