Abstract
Over the last decade, Australia has witnessed unprecedented growth in its distributed energy resource (DER) installed capacity base, growing from around 3 GW in 2013 to nearly 19 GW in 2023. Alongside this massive expansion in DER capacity has come the opportunity for DER to be aggregated to form virtual power plants (VPP) that can be coordinated and controlled by a central operator. By harnessing DER at scale, VPPs can interact with wholesale electricity markets either (i) directly through energy and ancillary services trading or (ii) indirectly by flexibly adjusting imports and exports in response to market prices. This chapter provides a review of how VPPs currently participate in wholesale electricity markets in Australia, and how they could participate in the future.