AI article
How to sign up for a virtual power plant—and decide whether you should
Publisher description: MIT Technology Review’s How To series helps you get things done. Your thermostat may not look like a power plant. Neither does your electric vehicle, home battery, or HVAC system. But utility and energy companies increasingly want to treat them like one. A virtual power plant, or VPP, is a collection of household devices (such…
MIT Technology Review | Aug 28, 2026 | Eshan Raul
Automated excerpt
Your thermostat may not look like a power plant. A virtual power plant, or VPP, is a collection of household devices (such as smart thermostats, electric-vehicle chargers, home batteries, and solar panels) that a utility can control. The amount of power the utility might throttle in any one home is small.
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