Virtual power plants to serve as cornerstone of Australia’s energy future

With the WA and Federal Labor leaning heavily into pre-election promises of a solar and battery system subsidy, their election wins secures real savings on household energy bills. While the details still require further clarification, in Western Australia one thing is for certain – to participate in the rebate, the solar battery system must be connected to a virtual power plant (VPP).

These subsidies indicate that government has recognised the very real value a VPP provides in grid stabilisation and is one of Australia’s clean energy solutions, as we race towards the net zero deadline. Our government recognises it doesn’t have to invest millions into new infrastructure when we can utilise rooftops across Australia.

Plico has been advocating for this for some time. Like the existing solar rebate, we’ve known that to accelerate the takeup of solar batteries at speed, the sector needed Government support.

Now, Australia has it.

Instead of customer solar and battery systems in the thousands, we expect it will grow into the millions. With the required VPP connection as part of the WA rebate, we could finally see the end of grid instability. To be able to flexibly switch on solar battery systems when we need them the most will stabilise not just the grid, but also the cost of energy in the future.

This is the third summer the Plico VPP has supported the WA grid, with its first successful activations occurring in January and February 2023. In 2024, it was activated more than 10 times. In 2025, it was activated to prevent 13 grid emergencies with an estimated 25.13 MWh exported to the grid. Plico also provides VPP contracted services for certain suburbs in Perth, that are known hot spots for grid instability.

Without a doubt, this is one of the most significant contributions ever made by a residential VPP aggregator (outside of trials) to the energy market across Australia.

Time and time again, it’s been proven that a single home battery system, when integrated into Plico’s VPP, has demonstrated the potential to revolutionise our future power grid demand. The VPP introduces flexibility, efficiency, and resilience into the energy ecosystem. It transforms the traditional model of centralised energy generation and distribution, paving the way for a more sustainable and adaptive power grid. The Plico VPP is also one that rewards its participants for being involved.

It’s a win for households, a win for the grid, and a win for clean energy and the environment.

A VPP is a collection of associated individual, independent household solar and battery systems, known as distributed energy resources (DER), that are united remotely to form a VPP. The Plico VPP uses cutting-edge technology to enable monitoring, control and optimised dispatch of its systems when they are needed most.

The VPP can be managed to bring the grid back into balance under both minimum demand and peak demand scenarios. When there is minimum demand, energy supply to the grid is high and energy demand on the grid is low. This can occur in the middle of mild sunny days when solar exports to the grid are high but there is low demand from homes, business and industry. Peak demand is when the opposite occurs; energy supply to the grid is low and demand is high. This usually occurs on hot summer evenings when energy demand increases just as solar exports start to decrease.

When the VPP is activated in a peak demand scenario, Plico assumes control of the customer’s battery remotely, and sets it to store and conserve energy during the day. This enables the systems to export energy back to the grid later when it was most needed later in the afternoon/evening.

Importantly, during this process customers are looked after. Plico pays members for the energy exported from their battery during a VPP event.

But there is a message we need to share for people wanting to capitalise on the excitement around the subsidies – buyer beware.

As with any government rebate, comes the introduction of pop-up businesses trying to capitalise on the new consumer interest and injection of funding. Make sure you partner with a solar battery business that has a proven track record in batteries, not just solar. Make sure you partner with a solar and battery provider that has an accredited VPP. Finally, make sure you partner with a business that provides financial rewards for being part of a VPP. In covering all of these elements, households will be able to fully capitalise on the subsidies available.

Author: Robbie Campbell, Chief Executive Officer of Plico

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those held by pv magazine.

This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.