About this episode

The episode discusses how virtual power plants can help alleviate the power crunch faced by data centers, featuring an interview with energy expert Elisa Wood.

Can electric vehicles, solar panels and smart thermostats in homes help free up more grid power for data centers? This concept that has been turning in recent months as the data center power crunch has become more challenging. The concept known as a virtual power plant or VPP. It's a collection of small energy sources that are brought together to create a large energy asset, which can be managed to help support the power grid in moments of high usage. The owners of homes and vehicles get paid for the energy they share back to the grid. Our guest today is Elisa Wood, an expert in distributed energy who can help us understand virtual power plants, and how they work. Elisa has been covering the energy sector for many years. She's the founder of Energy Changemakers, where she reports on the future of distributed energy. I asked Elisa to join us because in recent months we've seen a growing push to tap unutilized energy that exists on power grids. It turned out to be a timely conversation. Literally while we were taping our podcast, Google announced a groundbreaking deal with VPP provider Voltus Energy, which marks the first time that a data center operator has worked with a VPP…

People in this episode

Host: Rich Miller

Guest: Elisa Wood

Topics covered

• virtual power plants
• data centers
• energy management
• distributed energy
• electric vehicles
• solar energy

Keywords

• virtual power plant
• data center power crunch
• energy sources
• grid power
• electric vehicles
• solar panels
• smart thermostats

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Google, Voltus Energy, Energy Changemakers

Places: PJM Interconnection, Eastern half of the country

More episodes of Data Center Richness

• How Google Built the Future of Data Centers · June 4, 2026 · 57 min
• The Future of Liquid Cooling · May 27, 2026 · 26 min
• Solid-State Transformers: The Bridge to 800 VDC? · May 13, 2026 · 26 min

Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Data Center Richness podcast page.