ComEd to file virtual power plant framework beyond batteries by 2027

ComEd will file a virtual power plant framework by the end of 2027 that reaches past batteries, a commitment Andrew Plenge, the utility's vice president of strategy and energy policy, laid out in a Utility Dive column. The filing builds on the recently approved Scheduled Dispatch Virtual Power Plant program, which pays customers with eligible battery systems for making a portion of their capacity available during certain peak periods.

That program is narrow by design. The framework due by the end of 2027 would take in more of what customers already run — electric vehicles, smart appliances and other flexible devices could play a role over time, Plenge writes. The details he flags are the ones that decide whether the capacity is financeable at scale: rules for how different resources participate, how their contributions are measured and valued, and how the benefits reach participating customers and the wider system.

A virtual power plant links devices customers own — home batteries among them — and coordinates them when the grid is tightest, most often on summer weekdays when air conditioning carries late into the afternoon and early evening. Those are the hours when electricity is most expensive and the grid is under the greatest strain, and meeting them the traditional way means keeping costly plants available and turning them on. Demand a utility can shift or curtail is capacity it does not have to build or buy for those hours, though the column puts no number on how much that is.

Illinois is supplying the pressure. Plenge lists the sources of it — households buying EVs, installing solar and batteries, and a growing economy drawing new demand on low rates — and writes that the grid is being put to the test to a degree it never has been. This publication argued last month that state-led procurement gives long-lead generation a counterparty the merchant market will not supply, with Illinois as the live test. ComEd's framework is that counterparty problem seen from the demand side: capacity arriving through customer devices rather than a new plant, and the measurement and payment rules that would make it dispatchable.

The filing is due by the end of 2027, and how much of ComEd's summer peak it actually covers will likely turn on whether compensation is rich enough to keep batteries and vehicles enrolled.