Alleviating grid stresses with virtual power plants, with Michael Lynch (Enel X)

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Sep 4, 2025

Michael Lynch, the Manager of Enel X's global Network Operations Centre, shares insights on managing grid stability through virtual power plants (VPPs). He explains how VPPs aggregate decentralized resources to optimize energy use during peak demand, especially in extreme weather. The discussion highlights the hurdles of coordinating diverse demand response strategies across time zones and emphasizes the human touch necessary for effective management. Lynch also predicts the future role of VPPs in enhancing grid flexibility amid increasing renewable energy volatility.

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INSIGHT

What A Virtual Power Plant Does

A VPP aggregates distributed energy resources across many businesses into portfolios that the system operator can dispatch.
Those aggregated portfolios act as a single flexible resource to relieve grid stress without building new plants.

INSIGHT

Scale And Market Reach Of The VPP

Enel X manages around 9 GW composed of 15,000 sites and 6,000 customers across 14 countries.
That scale supports participation in many market types including capacity, balance, and frequency response.

INSIGHT

Assets Vary Between Curtailment And Storage

VPP asset mixes vary: many sites provide curtailment while battery storage and on-site generation grow.
Batteries allow discharge at peaks, while curtailment delays or stops production to reduce demand.

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Electricity grids worldwide need both the flexibility to adapt to renewable energy sources, and the resilience to cope with grid-stress events. Demand curtailment and other forms of demand-side response (DSR) play an increasingly fundamental role in supporting both these requirements, yet direct participation in these programmes can be complex, and is typically geared towards high-demand customers with single, centralised sites.

However smaller, decentralised organisations can still unlock the benefits of DSR and provide a crucial grid service by working with an aggregator. By bringing multiple demand customers and sites together in a virtual power plant (VPP), aggregators help businesses of all sizes become major contributors to grid stability, without the challenges of managing individual enrolment themselves.

In this episode, Michael Lynch, manager of Enel X’s global Network Operations Centre (NOC) in Dublin, joins Ed Porter to discuss the growing role of VPPs in helping stabilise global electricity grids. In conversation they discuss:

The nature of VPPs, and the type of generation, storage and load-curtailment resources they aggregate.
How VPPs respond to the requirements of grid and asset operators.
The use of flexibility and automation in managing VPP performance.
The need for resilience in the NOC to ensure a reliable and rapid response in volatile conditions – from shutdowns and outages, to extreme weather and earthquakes.
The human dimension and skills set required to balance around 10 GW of flexibility services worldwide.
The future of VPPs as they adopt more battery storage assets in EVs, homes and businesses.

About our guest

Michael joined Enel X Global Retail in 2020 from an airline operations control centre, where he

gained hands-on experience planning, scheduling and managing disruptions in a fast-paced,

high-pressure environment.

Enel X Global Retail is Enel Group’s business line dedicated to customers around the world with the aim of effectively providing products and services based on their energy needs and encouraging them towards a more conscious and sustainable use of energy. Globally, it provides electricity, integrated and innovative energy services to more than 54 million customers worldwide, offering flexibility services aggregating 9.8 GW, managing around 3 million lighting points, and with 30,500 owned public charging points for electric mobility.

For more information on what Enel X Global Retail does, head to its website at https://www.enelx.com/uk/en/

About Modo Energy

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