"Virtual power plant" is more recent term of art in the industry for being able to orchestrate either providing power to the grid (distributed batteries and/or solar providing power to the grid from distributed generation when called upon in the aggregate) or controlling distributed load (like EV chargers, water heaters, or AC chillers that can make ice to time shift energy consumption) in a more controlled and granular way.

Turning off AC units in regions to shed load was a very crude tool with tech available at the time, broad internet connectivity and sophisticated power controls and energy storage allows for much more sophisticated grid energy orchestration (enabling "virtual power plants"). The term of art is a result of the state of the art grid power control advancements.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/02/07/1087836/how-virt...

https://greenmountainpower.com/news/gmps-request-to-expand-c...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_power_plant

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...