The "Amazon of Energy": Virtual Power Plants
By Nick Hodge
The $37 trillion emerging technology boom is set to facilitate and expedite the adoption of virtual power plants for grid management.
Three innovations are making it possible:
- Innovation #1: The first is the $19 trillion 5G Internet of Things, which connects all the various devices and mini power generators, and brings them online together, running at lightning-fast speeds.
- Innovation #2: The second is the $15 trillion Artificial Intelligence market, capable of monitoring ten million bits of data per second to anticipate and automatically respond to power needs instantly.
- Innovation #3: The final and most significant is the $3 trillion blockchain technology market, recording and tracking energy transactions in real time between utilities, neighbors, and even someone 10,000 miles away. Blockchain is a distributed ledger — a single measure of dispersed financial transactions controlled by no single entity… And a virtual power plant is distributed energy — a collection of dispersed batteries and power generators. They’re the perfect match.
These technologies, worth $37 trillion, are revolutionizing everything…
And now energy — the biggest and most lucrative market — is next.
Virtual power plants already power 50 million homes worldwide.
They are the “software” to the energy “hardware” of batteries, electric vehicles, and solar panels.
Virtual power plants are like an infinite energy storage space. It’s like cloud computing for energy. It captures and releases energy generated from any source… And creates an endless “dispatchable load” of power. All available online.
This solves the biggest problem of renewable energy.
And it's happening now...
Using cloud-based artificial intelligence, Starkraft created a virtual power plant in Germany. Connecting 1,500 wind farms, hydro plants, solar panels, and batteries to generate 12 gigawatts of power, or enough to power five million homes, it’s becoming Germany’s biggest utility! Twice the size of the largest coal operator.
This is only a preview of what’s coming…
In Europe, Next Kraftwerke runs a virtual power plant of 10,000 units, including solar, hydropower and bioenergy. It was taken out in February 2021 by Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS).
Virtual power plants are already the reality.
When rolling blackouts hit California in 2020… it was a virtual power plant that saved the day in San Francisco with the New York Times reporting one "delivered 50 megawatts — enough to power 20,000 homes — from batteries it had installed at businesses, local governments and other customers.”
This is the uncontested future of energy.
Absolutely nothing is stopping all power from going online.
Much like Amazon when it began taking over retail… this is about to get so much bigger. And an "Amazon of Energy" is sure to emerge.
A consortium of Europe’s big grid operators is getting on board. These operators run the traditional power grid, and now they’re making moves into the digital space.
Using blockchain ledgers, they’re deploying virtual power plants in Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. They now predict, “by 2030, there will be sufficient electric vehicles and home batteries in place to balance Europe’s grids to a large extent, if not completely.”
In other words, virtual power plants will be responsible for balancing the entire grid!
Imagine if we could run an entire city’s grid on a 5G-powered laptop or phone…
In Japan, a virtual power plant is forming as well, connecting 10,000 units, including electric vehicle chargers, home batteries, solar panels, and even A/C units. Once completed it’ll be the world’s largest virtual power plant.
But it won’t keep that title for long...
In Western Australia, ravaged by catastrophic wildfires, there’s a new push to go entirely green. And virtual power plants are leading the way. One is connecting as many as 50,000 different units. It’ll be an entirely new scale for this technology.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is investing as much as $635 million to create a plant of similar magnitude in Southern Australia. As many as 1.6 million homes will be impacted. It's not even a fully launched product, and yet Tesla’s digital utility is already keeping the grid running.
From Australia to Zimbabwe… the grid is going online at a breathtaking pace.
Call it like you see it,
Nick Hodge
Editor, Daily Profit Cycle
Nick Hodge is the co-owner and publisher of Daily Profit Cycle. He's also the founder of Hodge Family Office, the umbrella organization for his three premium services: Hodge Family Office, Family Office Advantage, and Foundational Profits. He specializes in private placements and speculations in early stage ventures, and has raised tens of millions of dollars of investment capital for resource, energy, cannabis, and medical technology companies. Co-author of two best-selling investment books, including Energy Investing for Dummies, his insights have been shared on news programs and in magazines and newspapers around the world.
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