The Illinois General Assembly is considering a bill package that supporters say would alleviate demand on the power grid and help lower energy prices.

The Clean and Reliable Grid Affordability Act ( CRGA ), in part, would clear the way for so-called virtual power plants or VPPs.

“It utilizes solar systems that are in homes or businesses paired with storage, and it aggregates, adds those systems all up together to help the overall grid,” said Amy Heart, the Senior Vice President of Policy at SunRun, a solar power and battery storage company.

Heart says 70% of the solar systems SunRun installs across the country now also include batteries.

“When you add up those thousands of systems across the state or across the region, you can actually dispatch those electrons at very specific time

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