Climate Science and Policy

The state of Maine faces three major challenges with its electric grid: resilience, affordability, and emissions reductions. At the same time, Maine is seeing significant adoption of distributed energy resources (DERs). Left unmanaged, these DERs can pose challenges for Maine’s grid and make managing load more difficult. However, by coordinating DERs with virtual power plants (VPPs), Maine can leverage this capacity to address its three grid challenges. VPPs have the potential to relieve grid stress, reduce reliance on costly and emissions-intensive peaker plants, and delay infrastructure build-out. Two programs in the state are already helping reduce peak load and sending power back to the grid via customer-owned batteries, but Maine has ample room for expansion. This report provides context on Maine’s energy challenges and the current state of VPPs in Maine. It then identifies key elements of successful VPPs that are applicable to Maine’s energy and regulatory systems, investor-owned utilities, and communities using case studies of out-of-state VPPs. Using these key elements, in conjunction with lessons learned from conversations with stakeholders across Maine’s energy space, policy recommendations are presented for Efficiency Maine Trust, Maine’s investor-owned utilities, and third-party aggregators on expanding VPP implementation. VPPs cannot solve all of Maine’s energy woes, but are an impactful tool the state can use to build a stronger energy future.