Colorado Renewable Energy Cooperative (CREC)

The Colorado Renewable Energy Cooperative is being proposed as an agricultural producer cooperative Virtual Power Plant (VPP), of energy farmers whose crop is energy, per CRS 7-56-210. In 2004, Rocky Mountain Farmers Union (RMFU) was the Champion behind the policy having recognized that Colorado farmers are the ideal producers of renewable energy like, solar, wind, bioenergy, hydro, etc. CREC will be facilitating an exploratory meeting of potential Colorado Renewable Energy Cooperative members. Membership is open to anyone who owns a Distributed Energy Resource (DER), on Xcel.

The USDA steps to Cooperative formation will be followed to ensure a democratic entity that follows the Seven Cooperative Principles. Sign up below to be notified of the exploratory meeting date.

Colorado just became the National leader in deployment of 3^rd party Virtual Power Plant (VPP). Our PUC’s final Ruling in case 23M-0466EG created a 3^rd party VPP pilot that starts soon. Our legislature then passed SB-218 that is based on the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) VPP pilot and extends the pilot into Law.

Colorado has defined a Prosumer as a participant on a VPP who delivers power, capacity, ancillary services, reserves and wires deferrals to the utility for performance-based compensation. This mandatory compensation for the full Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), value stack, combined with IRA credits, will make DERs very profitable for Colorado Farmers who are on Xcel’s grid. In the past, DER systems were net metered customers, only allowed self-consumption of the energy they produced, and did not allow sale of excess energy.

A Utility Customer Pays Bills, a Prosumer Cashes Checks.

VPPs are a value driven global disruptive revolution in 3D,

• Decentralize: Prosumer owned Distributed Energy Resources, DERs, provide more value to the electric system than the same capacity at utility scale.
• Democratize: The Community economic development value of DER revenues going into the pockets of local Prosumers where it circulates through local economies with a multiplier effect.
• Decarbonize: The environmental value of transitioning from fossil fuel to renewables.

The Energy Policy of the United States is to transition from centralized fossil fueled generation to virtual powerplants, VPPs, of localized renewable distributed energy resources. The plan is called “Pathway to commercial lift off- Virtual Power Plants.” The main arguments for VPPs in the Liftoff plan are economic. “Rather than using natural gas peaker plants to burn fuel and transport electricity over transmission and distribution (T&D) lines, utilities can use VPPs to pay participating end-users (Prosumers) for balancing demand on the grid locally with DERs and supporting systems.”

The new Google funded study by Brattle shows that Virtual Power Plant aggregations, VPPs, of DERs, not in rates, can provide value far beyond the KWhrs, like “free” capacity to other ratepayers. This says that utility owned, and ratepayer funded assets, compared to Prosumer funded and owned decentralized assets, are economically obsolete. The cost comparison conclusion in the Doc- “The VPP is the only resource with the potential to provide resource adequacy at a negative net cost to society.”

Rocky Mountain Institute says that this is a value driven technological revolution

RMI has a VPP overview

The world’s largest power plant (of any kind) is already a 13GW VPP aggregating over 25,000 Prosumers. They have 1500 Prosumer biogas plants storing fuel to come online for “dark calm”, periods of no wind and no sun. German engineers refer to this highest value period as Dunkelflaute, fear of the dark. –  The Power of Many

Bill Mckibben on VPPs

This shows Prosumers as the owners of a home-based business