Shanghai's Virtual Power Plant demand response
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
8 sourced claims on this page, none individually verified yet — turn on “Sources in the text” to see each one.
How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means · The full record behind this page
It began in 2019 as a trial with four aggregators and 512 customers. On the city's record-load day in August 2025 the utility says it shifted 1.163 million kW — an operator figure, not audited.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,167 documented projects · 🏙️ 11 more in Shanghai · 🔌 Smart grid & energy guide · ⚡ Energy projects
State Grid Shanghai aggregates data centres, building air conditioning and EV charging points into a virtual power plant it can call on when the city grid peaks. A trial launched in December 2019 with four aggregators and 512 customers. On 11 August 2025, as Shanghai set a record load of 40.55 million kW, the utility says the virtual power plant shifted 1.163 million kW.
📊 Impact
State Grid Shanghai reports a record 1.163 million kW of load shifted during the August 2025 heatwave, drawn from 47 aggregators; registered capacity reached 2.03 million kW across 49 operators, up 81% since 2024. Operator-reported, not independently audited.
🎓 Lesson
A virtual power plant does not make power; it persuades load to go away, and the unit that measures that is easy to lose. Shanghai's record is 1.163 million kilowatts of load adjustment — a rate, not a quantity of energy — and the trade press reported the same event as 1.163 million kilowatt-hours, which is a different measure of a different thing. The second number worth keeping apart is registered capacity: 2.03 million kW is what 49 operators have signed up, while 1.163 million kW is what 47 of them delivered on the hottest afternoon of the year. What a demand-response scheme has on paper and what it produces on the day are two figures, and only the second one keeps the lights on.
Sources
📅 How old is the evidence?
Two clocks, kept apart: when this entry’s sources were published, and what has happened to its record in the atlas. Documented span: since 2019. 5 of 5 sources carry a publication date, from 19 December 2019 to 15 August 2025.
When the sources were published
- Yicai Global · pressYicai Global — Shanghai Is Trialing China's First Virtual Power Plant (19 Dec 2019)
- Shanghai Municipal Government · city governmentShanghai Municipal Government — Shanghai develops framework to regulate virtual power plants (27 May 2025)
- China Daily · pressChina Daily — Shanghai secures power supply amid record high demand (13 Aug 2025)
- China News Service · pressChina News Service — Shanghai conducts first million-kilowatt virtual power plant operation (15 Aug 2025)
- Microgrid Knowledge · pressMicrogrid Knowledge — Virtual Power Reaches Global: China Claims New Aggregation Record (15 Aug 2025)
Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 8 claims with their sources · the forensic record
Evidence Passport · public beta 8 addressable claims, 5 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The passport is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.
Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 8
The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.
clm-174fb793bca6b307
descriptive
State Grid Shanghai aggregates data centres, building air conditioning and EV charging points into a virtual power plant it can call on when the city grid peaks
Sources carrying this claim
clm-07bfad649e33bd31
quantitative
A trial launched in December 2019 with four aggregators and 512 customers
Sources carrying this claim
clm-7192d9d5590074df
quantitative
On 11 August 2025, as Shanghai set a record load of 40.55 million kW
Sources carrying this claim
clm-98513c4c9fed934d
quantitative
the utility says the virtual power plant shifted 1.163 million kW
Sources carrying this claim
clm-51afd31065ef51ed
quantitative
State Grid Shanghai reports a record 1.163 million kW of load shifted during the August 2025 heatwave, drawn from 47 aggregators
Sources carrying this claim
clm-5cd0aab803cda8c6
quantitative
registered capacity reached 2.03 million kW across 49 operators, up 81% since 2024
Sources carrying this claim
clm-77a0591f42820548
descriptive
Operator-reported, not independently audited
Sources carrying this claim
clm-c83bc88f6aae39d8
quantitative
the trade press reported the same event as 1.163 million kilowatt-hours, which is a different measure of a different thing
Sources carrying this claim
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders
This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.
Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.
Erratum on this revision's envelope. The snapshot, its hash and its permanent link are untouched.
- createdAt previously read 2026-08-29T10:00:00Z. The batching script that produced this revision advanced createdAt into the future to satisfy the strictly-increasing order the validator requires per entity. The value never recorded a real event; the corrected value is the moment the revision provably existed in the repository. Corrected to 2026-08-27T02:33:50Z on 2026-08-27; evidence: first appears in commit 36d00a0e15, committed 2026-08-27T02:33:50Z.
sha256:cab1300e7471f46cc8d22d90e985f3dfa6c958629d3a0075e8d37ad37cc4755c
- 8
- of 8 claims mapped
- 5
- source dossiers
- 5
- publication dates recorded
- 0
- archives linked
- 0
- exact locators
- 0
- content captures hashed
Governance facts carried by the record
- Operator
- State Grid Shanghai Municipal Electric Power Company
- Actor types
- utility
- Funding model
- utility
- Funding description
- Not recorded
- Cost
- Not recorded
- Ownership
- Not recorded
- Decision rights
- Not recorded
- Exit conditions
- Not recorded
5 source dossiers
China News Service — Shanghai conducts first million-kilowatt virtual power plant operation (15 Aug 2025)
- Stable source ID
src-f5e13d30bdd1f58c- Publisher
- Name not classified · ecns.cn
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2025-08-15
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-29
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Carrying source for the impact figures: a record load adjustment of 1.163 million kW from 47 operators including data centres, building air conditioning and EV charging stations; registered capacity 2.03 million kW across 49 operators, up 81% since 2024. Operator-reported.
China Daily — Shanghai secures power supply amid record high demand (13 Aug 2025)
- Stable source ID
src-2bdee5292126cd16- Publisher
- Name not classified · global.chinadaily.com.cn
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2025-08-13
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-29
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Corroboration of the grid peak: 40.55 million kW at 11:23 on 11 August 2025, a new historical high, with virtual power plant adjustment among the measures deployed.
- Claims linked
Yicai Global — Shanghai Is Trialing China's First Virtual Power Plant (19 Dec 2019)
- Stable source ID
src-0aaf093f6246f45a- Publisher
- Name not classified · yicaiglobal.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2019-12-19
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-29
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Source for the trial launch on 5 December 2019 with four operators and 512 customers, covering EV charging piles, industrial parks, commercial buildings and solar storage. Its 'China's first' framing is not used in this entry.
- Claims linked
Shanghai Municipal Government — Shanghai develops framework to regulate virtual power plants (27 May 2025)
- Stable source ID
src-0cf82f3650468103- Publisher
- Name not classified · english.shanghai.gov.cn
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2025-05-27
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-29
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Governance context: Songjiang District's trial VPP management measures, effective April 2025, targeting a 100 MW demand-side peak-shaving VPP by end-2025. A district framework, not the citywide aggregation.
- Claims linked
- Background source; no baseline claim points here
Microgrid Knowledge — Virtual Power Reaches Global: China Claims New Aggregation Record (15 Aug 2025)
- Stable source ID
src-2cdab8e21e9a42d5- Publisher
- Name not classified · microgridknowledge.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2025-08-15
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-08-27
- Dossier created
- 2026-08-29
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Trade-press pickup of the same August 2025 event. Caution: it renders the figure as kWh; the Chinese original and China News Service report 1.163 million kilowatts of load adjustment, not kilowatt-hours.
- Claims linked
Known limits of this passport
- Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
- Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
- A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
- The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Shanghai's Virtual Power Plant demand response” — Shanghai, China. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/shanghai-virtual-power-plant/ (last verified 2026-08-27). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.