TechFlow News — Qiao Wang, founder and core contributor of Alliance DAO, has published an article titled "Decentralized Energy: Crypto-Enabled Virtual Power Plants," exploring the future prospects of virtual power plants (VPPs) and the potential role of crypto technology.
The article explains that VPPs can flexibly manage small-scale energy resources from homes and businesses—such as thermostats, electric vehicles, and solar panels—by aggregating and coordinating them to meet grid demands.
The U.S. Department of Energy projects a peak supply-demand gap of approximately 200GW between 2023 and 2030, with 50–100GW of this gap potentially addressable by VPPs.
China’s 14th Five-Year Plan also aims for demand-side response capabilities to reach 5%–6% of peak load by 2030, equivalent to about 100GW.
Qiao Wang believes that crypto technology can help VPPs achieve critical mass faster and accelerate network effects. He views VPPs as energy markets, where the supply side consists of households and their energy devices, and the demand side is the power grid.
The article also notes that Alliance has already funded several crypto x energy startups. The latest is Starpower, a decentralized physical infrastructure network (DePIN) targeting VPPs, which has sold 20,000 smart home energy devices.
