Lawmakers Hear Pitch to Scale Virtual Power Plants to Shave Peak Demand

Representative Gamba told the Senate Committee on Energy and Environment on May 28 that Oregon faces a near-term risk of rolling blackouts and urged faster deployment of distributed power plants under House Bill 3609.

"The coming load avalanche that we've had headed our way, is going to need a lot of solutions," Representative Gamba said, emphasizing peak summer demand moments where "we're going to see the rolling blackouts when they come." He said the bill is intended to expand who may aggregate customer-side resources and get those resources online sooner.

Advocates framed the proposal as a low-cost way to add capacity by coordinating customer-owned resources—home batteries, solar, smart thermostats, electric vehicles and smart water heaters—so they behave like a centrally managed power plant. Jessica Adamson of the Oregon Solar and Storage Industries Association told the committee, "Energy procured through virtual power plants is the cheapest energy on the market," and said third-party aggregators have enabled rapid scaling elsewhere.

Shannon Anderson, distributed power plant policy director at Solar United Neighbors, described how aggregators bundle distributed resources and "advanced software manages these resources together, and decides when to store energy or when to send it to the grid." She said the technology can be deployed quickly and cited examples: "In Puerto Rico right now ... the utility there is scaling up their program from 7,500 customers to 60,000, within a matter of months." Anderson added that customers receive compensation for participation and that aggregators can help with enrollment and financing, including for low- and moderate-income households.

Portland General Electric told the committee it already operates programs that meet many of the bill’s goals but cautioned that the draft legislation could hinder progress. Franco Albi, PGE director of regional integration, said, "We are actively building that virtual power plant ... This isn't a pilot. This is an operational program," noting PGE serves over 250,000 customers in one or more programs and has dispatched its portfolio over 1,100 times in the last three years. Albi said the company has also dispatched the virtual power plant during heat events, providing “upwards of a hundred megawatts” on peak days.

PGE raised concerns that the bill would shift control over programs away from customers and regulators to third-party aggregators, reduce Oregon Public Utility Commission authority to define aggregator roles, and could lock operational details into statute at a time when technology is evolving. "It really requires payments to aggregators, but doesn't ensure that the customer protections, or value to the customer is delivered," Albi said.

Committee members asked about costs, timelines and customer protections. Witnesses said program implementation costs for utilities are modest relative to building new transmission—testimony described administrative and start-up figures on the order of millions of dollars—and that much of the underlying hardware has already been purchased by consumers. On whether the programs would reduce the need to build new transmission, speakers said distributed power plants can "buy us time" by shaving peaks but are not a permanent substitute for long-term infrastructure investments.

The session was informational; no bill vote or formal direction was taken. Supporters urged rapid legislative action so aggregators and utilities can scale participation ahead of projected peak-load stress, while PGE urged maintaining regulator oversight and consumer choice.

The committee closed the distributed power plant briefing and moved on to a second informational item on the Climate Protection Program.