What is the topic of your Review article and why is it important?

Our review article examines virtual power plants (VPPs) and their potential to bridge the gap between utilities and electricity customers while facilitating the clean energy transition. VPPs aggregate distributed energy resources (DERs)—such as batteries, rooftop solar, electric vehicles, smart thermostats, and flexible loads—and coordinate them through software to provide grid services traditionally supplied by large centralized power plants. The review focuses particularly on the United States and evaluates how VPPs can contribute to grid reliability, resilience, decarbonization, economic savings, and broader societal benefits.

The topic is increasingly important because the U.S. electric grid is facing several challenges simultaneously. Extreme weather threatens grid reliability, conventional power plants are retiring, electricity demand is expected to grow rapidly because of electrification, electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, and data centers, and increasing amounts of variable renewable energy create new challenges for balancing electricity supply and demand. At the same time, building new centralized infrastructure and operating fossil-fueled peaker plants can be expensive and can increase emissions and air pollution.

VPPs offer a potentially cost-effective alternative by using energy resources that are already distributed throughout homes and businesses. By coordinating these resources, VPPs can reduce peak demand, provide backup power during grid emergencies, integrate more renewable energy, and potentially reduce costs for both utilities and ratepayers. They may also generate public-health and environmental benefits by reducing reliance on fossil-fueled peaker plants, which are disproportionately located near disadvantaged communities.
Importantly, the review goes beyond describing the technical potential of VPPs. It surveys existing U.S. programs and examines a California VPP case study to evaluate real-world performance, costs, and emissions. The article also identifies barriers to scaling VPPs—including customer participation, compensation, affordability, equity, and business models—highlighting that realizing their potential will require approaches that align the interests of utilities, customers, and communities.

What breakthroughs would you most like to see in the future?

For the future of the energy transition, I would most like to see breakthroughs that make clean energy not only technically feasible, but fundamentally easier, cheaper, and more reliable to deploy at scale. In particular, I would like to see major advances in long-duration energy storage, advanced power electronics, and flexible electricity systems that allow grids with very high shares of renewable energy to operate reliably across hours, days, and seasons. Storage technologies that are inexpensive, durable, safe, and based on abundant materials could dramatically change how we design and operate power systems.

I would also like to see breakthroughs in grid infrastructure and distributed energy resources. Technologies such as virtual power plants, advanced demand response, vehicle-to-grid systems, and intelligent controls could allow millions of homes, vehicles, batteries, and businesses to function as coordinated resources. The challenge is not simply developing these technologies, but creating systems that can integrate them efficiently while maintaining reliability and affordability.

Beyond individual technologies, I am particularly interested in breakthroughs at the intersection of energy, data, and decision-making. Artificial intelligence and advanced modeling could help planners identify cost-effective pathways for decarbonization, optimize complex energy systems in real time, and better understand how climate change and extreme events affect energy infrastructure.

Finally, I would like to see breakthroughs that address the global equity dimension of the energy transition. Many of the world’s fastest-growing energy needs are in emerging economies, where access to capital, infrastructure, and technical expertise can be major constraints. I hope to see new approaches to financing, technology transfer, and international collaboration that allow countries to leapfrog toward affordable, resilient, low-carbon energy systems.

Ultimately, the breakthrough I most want is a combination of technologies and institutions that makes a clean, reliable, affordable, and equitable energy system the easiest choice—not simply the ideal one.

Dr. Kittner studies energy systems at multiple scales, from regional and international power grids to community-owned micro-grids and household energy dynamics. Kittner’s current work examines the relationship between energy systems, low-carbon development, and human health. Ongoing projects include energy system planning in Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar, the emissions and health effects of coal-fired power plants in Kosovo, and battery assessment for electric vehicle and energy storage applications. Kittner holds a PhD in Energy and Resources from UC Berkeley where he studied energy systems engineering, science, and policy. His work with the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab (RAEL) appears in leading journals ranging from Nature Energy to Environmental Science and Technology and Ecological Economics. Previously, he was a Fulbright Fellow at the Joint Graduate School of Energy and Environment in Bangkok, Thailand and has worked extensively on a Thai Solar PV Roadmap project with colleagues at Chulalongkorn University. He received his BS in Environmental Science (highest honors) with a dual minor in Mathematics and Urban Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.