Virtual power plants (VPPs) are one of the most operationally complex businesses in the energy transition. A VPP aggregates thousands — sometimes hundreds of thousands — of distributed energy resources including residential batteries, water heaters, EV chargers, smart thermostats, and commercial demand response assets into a single dispatchable resource that can respond to grid signals and participate in wholesale electricity markets.
Wood Mackenzie projects the global VPP market will grow to $5.8 billion by 2028, with North America and Australia leading in commercial deployment. The companies operating these platforms face a distinctive operational challenge: they must manage the relationship between grid operators, utilities, and individual asset owners simultaneously, across a scale that creates constant administrative demands. Virtual assistants (VAs) are becoming a core component of the operational infrastructure that allows VPP companies to serve growing portfolios efficiently.
Asset Enrollment and Customer Onboarding
Every VPP asset must be enrolled before it can be dispatched. Enrollment involves collecting device information, verifying customer eligibility for specific programs, obtaining consent for remote dispatch, and submitting enrollment documentation to utility or ISO program administrators. For VPP companies growing their portfolios rapidly, the enrollment process must be treated as a production operation rather than a one-time event.
Virtual assistants manage the customer-facing and administrative side of enrollment: processing enrollment applications, verifying eligibility criteria, preparing submission packages for program administrators, and tracking enrollment status through utility or ISO portals. According to a 2024 report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, VPP programs in the United States added more than 30 GW of enrolled capacity in 2023 — representing a massive volume of enrollment transactions that must be processed accurately and on time.
VAs also handle the ongoing customer communication associated with enrolled accounts: sending dispatch notification confirmations, responding to customer inquiries about their participation, and maintaining up-to-date contact and device records.
Market Settlement and Revenue Reconciliation
VPPs that participate in wholesale electricity markets — providing frequency regulation, spinning reserves, or energy arbitrage through ISOs and RTOs — receive settlement payments based on their metered performance during dispatch events. Reconciling those settlements against expected performance, identifying payment discrepancies, and tracking settlement timelines across multiple market programs is a sustained administrative function.
Virtual assistants support market settlement operations by maintaining settlement payment records, cross-referencing expected versus received payments, flagging discrepancies for escalation to market operations staff, and preparing summary reports for finance teams. For VPPs participating in multiple markets across multiple ISOs, this reconciliation function scales with portfolio size in ways that quickly justify dedicated VA support.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Order 2222, which requires ISOs to open wholesale markets to DER aggregators, has expanded the number of markets in which VPPs can participate — increasing settlement complexity at the same time as it increases revenue opportunity.
Regulatory Compliance and Program Reporting
VPP companies operating in regulated utility programs face recurring reporting obligations that demonstrate asset availability, dispatch performance, and program compliance. These reports are required to maintain program enrollment and to claim incentive payments tied to performance.
Virtual assistants handle the data aggregation, formatting, and submission tasks associated with compliance reporting. They pull performance data from VPP management platforms, format it to program reporting templates, and submit reports on the schedules required by utility or ISO program administrators. For companies with diverse program participation — spanning utility demand response, frequency regulation markets, and state clean energy incentive programs — managing these reporting cycles simultaneously requires organized, systematic administrative support.
Customer Success and Retention
VPP companies compete for the same distributed assets as competing platforms, making customer retention a commercial priority. Customers who feel underserved — because their questions go unanswered or their settlement payments are unclear — churn to competing programs or simply opt out of dispatch participation.
Virtual assistants provide the customer success support layer that keeps enrolled customers engaged: responding to program inquiries, sending proactive communications about upcoming dispatch events, following up after dispatch events to address questions, and flagging accounts showing signs of disengagement. This proactive customer management is difficult to deliver at scale without dedicated support staff — and VAs provide that support at a fraction of the cost of full-time employees.
VPP companies looking to build scalable customer and operational support functions can explore Stealth Agents, which specializes in providing vetted virtual assistants for businesses with complex operational and customer management needs.
Sources
- Wood Mackenzie. Virtual Power Plant Market Outlook 2024. https://www.woodmac.com
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Demand Response and Virtual Power Plant Trends. 2024. https://emp.lbl.gov
- Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Order No. 2222: Participation of Distributed Energy Resource Aggregations. https://www.ferc.gov