The New Orleans, Louisiana, US City Council voted unanimously to approve a US$28 million virtual power plant (VPP) programme, reportedly, the first distributed energy resource (DER) programme in the city.

Virtual power plants (VPPs) are networks of small-scale, distributed energy resources, such as solar panels or batteries (and in some instances vehicles) which can together function as a single power plant, providing stability to the electric grid.

Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) is set to launch a demonstration of how solar panels, energy storage and customer-sited demand side response (DSR) can be used to drive down costs of the IESO’s network.