Vermont's largest energy source is now a virtual power plant | July 2026

[u/Vailhem]

https://electrek.co/2026/07/28/vermonts-largest-energy-source-is-now-a-virtual-power-plant/

[u/tujuggernaut]

Maybe that's interesting for VT but 110MW VPP is not big at all. Voltus manages much much more than that in SPP, and ERCOT is getting 10GW storage discharge most days.

[u/GraniteGeekNH → u/tujuggernaut]

As a percentage of the total utility, though, it's unsurpassed. That's what is interesting here - it doesn't overwhelm the system.

[u/tujuggernaut → u/GraniteGeekNH]

But it's not even close to the largest battery/demand management in ISO-NE. VT is an artificial boundary that doesn't mean anything to the power grid.

[u/GraniteGeekNH → u/tujuggernaut]

True - but it does mean something in terms of utility operation. If a small utility can handle such a large percentage of its total as a VPP, then big utilities might not be so down on them. That's the idea, anyway.

[u/tujuggernaut → u/GraniteGeekNH]

The generating capacity within a state's borders is completely meaningless in terms of how power is actually supplied. The bigger question is the size of the unit relative to the ISO it is located within as this is the pool of supply that will be allocated across the footprint. Electrons do not care where state lines are and ISO's do not either.

In ISO-NE, ConnectedSolutions runs a VPP that is 375MW. There are several others bigger in ISO-NE. The 'Vermont' metric is meaningless.

Why do you think big utilities are down on VPP's or storage? They're not. It's ISO-NE's rules that have lagged.

Five years ago there was less than 1GW of battery storage in ERCOT. Now there's 10GW+ of discharge daily with capacity higher. In SPP, the Volutus VPP's aggregate to ~5GW in a grid that peaks around 40-50GW. As a percentage it's quite large, but they have been active in SPP for quite a while. No one is 'down' on it.

This is nothing new, it's only new to ISO-NE and part of the country that are behind.

[u/GraniteGeekNH → u/tujuggernaut]

Yes, that's all well known. AS I said, what's interesting here is the relative amount of one utility's production.

[u/tujuggernaut → u/GraniteGeekNH]

Why is that interesting at a utility level? They are all participants in the same market. In a market like ISO-NE, there is zero guarenette a given utility's plants are serving specifically that utility's load obligations. Sometimes none of the utility assets may be ITM; that doesn't' mean their customers go dark.

Vermont is a bizarre state for power generation. They retired the one nuke they had and do not have any gas or coal. The biggest thermal generators are biomass. The only other place that's true is Hawaii.

A VPP as a portion of a utility gen portfolio means what? What is the take-away? You seem to have implied utilities were 'down' on VPP's but what is your evidence of that? You seemed to suggest that Vermont having a 'large' VPP (which it isn't) would mean more of these projects would be looked at. The second part is true, more will be, but that's because of revisions to ISO-NE rules in terms of what storage assets and VPP can offer in DA, including ancillaries. That rule change shifts economic incentives. The concept itself has been proven not only in other markets, but also in ISO-NE with companies that saw the economics differently. I already mentioned the ConnectedSolutions VPP in ISO-NE that is 4x the size of this VT project and has been operating for a while.

The only real story here is that Vermont as a state has not invested in power generation to the extent that cobbling together a modest size VPP results in the state's biggest 'generator'.

[u/ginger_and_egg → u/tujuggernaut]

State lines themselves don't matter but electrons DO care how far they have to travel to get from power plant to the load. So a geographic area with it's biggest source being VPP is still interesting enough

[u/mcot2222 → u/tujuggernaut]

All of utilities here suck and our various state PUCs have no clue what they are doing. We fall hopelessly behind the rest of the country.

[u/Vailhem → u/[deleted]]

Nuclear fuel is finite?

[u/Vailhem → u/[deleted]]

What about reprocessing? Utilization of the U-238 for Pu production? Thorium into U-233?

Did your searches even include utilizing Pu as fuel?

Seemingly providing some incomplete numbers there.

[u/Vailhem → u/[deleted]]

If nuclear proliferation is a concern, wouldn't it seemly be prudent & advantageous to reduce the quantities of incredibly energy dense plutonium feedstocks that already exist via fissioning them in nuclear reactors designed with that capability?

Did you expand your feedstock time-lines to include plutonium in your numbers?

[u/Vailhem → u/[deleted]]

Why do you keep coming back to stock symbols?

You mentioned concerns about plutonium. The reply was about already existing plutonium feedstocks and the ability to reduce its availability for potential proliferation risks.

Seemingly you're fine with existing weapons-grade materials that already exist, so it's also potentially safe to say that you're fine with existing plutonium-based nuclear weapons existing?

[u/Vailhem → u/[deleted]]

Wind: Vestas, Siemens, GE Vernova, Goldmine

Solar: JinkoSolar, LONGi Green Energy Technology, JA

Solar Technology, Trina Solar, Canadian Solar

Tidal: SIMEC Atlantis Energy, Orbital Marine Power, Nova Innovation, Ocean Renewable Power Company (ORPC), Minesto

Gravity: Energy Vault, Gravitricity, Advanced Rail Energy Storage (ARES), Gravity Power, Green Gravity

...

Do you need the mining, (bunker fuel burning) shipping, (predominantly diesel burning) rail & trucking companies for them too?

Edit: such as to say (that) your position seems predicated on the position that because the energy being 'harvested' by these, there's no reason to utilize energy systems that rely on a refined fuel supply such as nuclear feedstocks, petroleum products, biomass, etc.

What doesn't seem to be taken into consideration with that position is the quantity of Mining, refining, transportation, installation, maintenance, ..let alone redundancy.. required by those systems either.

But, going with your other statements as well, 'weapons proliferation is bad' and already mined&refined fissionable feedstocks (already) exist. There's an already existing benefit from their reduction, several already exist on sites they no longer need additional transportation to for utilization, and their more predictably consistent outputs with decades if not century of well documented use cases support a reduced environmental footprint due to the lack of redundancy required by them (to meet demand), and due to their inherent nature, and incredibly dense form of ..again, proven accessible.. harnessable energy.

There are vulnerabilities in both systems, but most making the case for the benefits of one approach aren't typically taking a very proactive position that denies the existence of the other(s)..

..where there are seemingly many more examples of those arguing for more of the others attempt to do so via positions that deny the continued utilization of the one.

Most nuclear advocates aren't typically making a case that better insulation, more efficient lighting, 'Green star rated appliances', simply putting on a sweater or taking off a layer of clothing, having an @home Energy storage system, .. even installing photovoltaic panels or a wind turbine where suitable.. are disallowed.

To go overly polarizing & binary with generalizations, there's an existentialistic approach towards one group that denies the other more than vice versus.

A reduction in available options. This is something that's increasingly ironic given that one of the arguments made by those groups is proliferation risk & waste management.. both of which are not-ironically reduced drastically by a continuation in fuelstock reduction which would come 'naturally' to the industry, and just as artificially from a mined refined and transported perspective as the increasing complexities inherent to photovoltaics and atomically accurate engineering in wind & tidal conversion systems.

For such a diverse approach towards energy, it seems to be pretty denying and selectively closed on what it permits and equally blind to its own footprint.