Deployment of Virtual Power Plants for Electrification Enablement: Increasing hosting capacity to support electrification

The transition to decarbonized and electrified energy systems is accelerating the adoption of photovoltaic (PV) systems, electric vehicles (EVs), and battery energy storage systems (BESS) in distribution networks. Utilities must expand hosting capacity for these distributed energy resources (DERs) while ensuring grid reliability. Traditional planning approaches often struggle with the probabilistic nature of DER adoption and the computational burden of Monte Carlo-based simulations. This paper introduces a novel probabilistic framework for hosting capacity assessment, eliminating the need for Monte Carlo simulations while improving accuracy and efficiency. We formulate hosting capacity as an optimization problem that accounts for DER adoption uncertainty and grid reliability constraints. Our method determines PV and EV hosting capacities under different confidence levels and identifies optimal non-wires alternatives (NWAs), such as BESS, to enhance grid capacity. Our findings reveal that the proposed method provides more reliable hosting capacity estimates with significantly reduced computational time compared to traditional approaches. Additionally, our co-optimization framework enables utilities to strategically balance NWAs and conventional grid upgrades. These methodologies offer a robust foundation for utilities and regulators to quantify electrification-related grid costs and guide strategic investment decisions.