World News for Students of English

16-01-2023 07:00

Companies including GM, Ford, and Google say that they want to work together to scale up the use of virtual power plants (VPPs).

People describe virtual power plants as a cleaner and greener way to avoid blackouts, and they could be one solution to a looming global energy crisis. VPPs are pools of decentralized energy resources such as electric vehicles or electric heaters controlled by smart thermostats. With customers’ permission, VPPs will use advanced software to react to electricity shortages when they switch off unnecessary energy consumption of resources. For example, they will switch thousands of electrical vehicles from charge to discharge mode or prompt electrical heaters to lower their output.

VPPS have already improved grid reliability in places like Germany and Australia. Thanks to new or enlarged tax incentives for sustainable energy efforts, experts expect explosive growth in the United States, as well.

Difficult words: scale up (to increase something), looming (about to happen soon and causing worry), incentive (a thing that motivates someone to do something).

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