Virtual Power Plants Face New Grid Test

In 1950, the English mathematician Alan Turing devised what he called “the imitation game.” Later dubbed the Turing test, the experiment asks a human participant to conduct a conversation with an unknown partner and try to determine if it’s a computer or a person on the other end of the line. If the person can’t figure it out, the machine passes the Turing test.

Power grid operators are now preparing for their own version of the game. Virtual power plants, which concatenate small, distributed…