What Counts as a Virtual Power Plant?
A virtual power plant is not a building. It is a pool of home batteries, solar systems, water heaters, and electric-vehicle chargers, coordinated by software so thousands of small adjustments act as one large generator. A few thousand enrolled homes can shift tens of megawatts within seconds of a grid signal.
That is fast enough to replace generation that would otherwise sit on standby. The word "virtual" is where the explanation usually goes wrong. Households hear it as abstract or provisional, when the thing being described is entirely physical and sitting in their own garage. The useful framing is not the grid's, it is theirs: something you already own is being asked to run at a slightly different time, and you are paid for the flexibility. Excluded on purpose is market mechanics — settlement intervals, dispatch pricing, and ancillary service categories are the reason the programme exists and not the reason anyone joins it.
This template covers the concept in eight scenes: two defining the pool against a conventional power station, two following one dispatch event through a single enrolled home, two on what the household controls and can override, one on how payment is calculated, and one on enrolment.
