A virtual power plant (VPP) isn’t really a power plant at all. It doesn’t actually exist. It’s a power plant of the IT mind—a plant locked in the digital world that can shift from traditional generation to smart-grid-enabled renewables at will. The VPP exists only in the software used to manage the different options, a classic Oracle that knows the answers and can, additionally, dispatch solutions in electric form.
Renewable energy, traditional energy, and the smart grid will intersect in a VPP. Once operational on grid scale, there could be huge economies, mostly especially in the nega-watt, which is power that didn’t have to be generated.