An integrated-energy business wants to establish a virtual power plant operations team. Its operations-director vacancy has been open for five months, with more than 20 people interviewed. Candidates who understand power-system operation lack spot-market knowledge. Data and AI specialists do not understand grid dispatch. The few who span both areas lack practical project experience or expect substantially more than the budget.
The question is where to look when the job requires experience that the industry has only recently begun to develop.
The National Energy Administration's China Power Supply Development Report (2026) records 470 operating virtual power plant projects at the end of 2025, almost 200 more than a year earlier. Tested maximum flexibility is given as 16.85 GW, up around 70%. It also records four Guangdong approval and announcement rounds covering 47 VPP operators, and more than 33 GW of renewable capacity entering the market directly in that province.
Projects and operating capacity have grown faster than the supply of people able to run them.
The work brings three capabilities together
A virtual power plant aggregates distributed resources such as charging points, storage, commercial and industrial loads, and distributed solar, then uses that portfolio to participate in electricity markets.
Operations therefore require power-system knowledge and the ability to work with grid dispatch; an understanding of prices, trading rules and market strategy; and familiarity with data platforms and communications that make resources observable, measurable, controllable and dispatchable.
A brief asking one “VPP operations manager” to understand dispatch, code in Python, win customers and run projects combines several distinct jobs. It may attract a grid-dispatch candidate without trading experience, an IT engineer without power-system knowledge or a Retailer's commercial candidate without platform depth. Each meets only part of the requirement.
Put experience requirements in the industry's time frame
China's move from VPP proof of concept to scaled implementation has taken roughly three to five years. With 470 operating projects at the end of 2025, a demand for ten years of VPP experience is unrealistic; even five years of directly comparable operations experience sharply restricts the pool.
Experienced candidates are more likely to have a sequence of related assignments: grid dispatch followed by demand response, storage integration followed by commercial and industrial aggregation, or an energy-internet platform role followed by market-facing work.
Their experience will not form an identical set. The employer needs to decide which parts matter immediately and how the remaining gaps will be covered.
Recruit complementary experience from adjacent sectors
Grid-dispatch candidates bring system behaviour and dispatch logic, with electricity-market rules as a possible development need. Electricity-retail candidates may understand medium- and long-term contracts and spot markets while needing resource-aggregation and platform experience. Storage integrator candidates understand BMS, EMS and the hardware, with trading strategy as the missing component.
A team built from those complementary backgrounds may be more practical than a prolonged search for one complete operations director.
The same logic applies to a trading team. Power-system experience, financial-market judgement and quantitative analysis may sit in different people. Defined responsibilities let those strengths work together.
Assess learning and transfer, as well as years served
The operating focus is changing rapidly: relatively simple load aggregation and demand response in 2024, stronger emphasis on trading strategies as spot markets opened in 2025, and growing use of AI dispatch and digital twins in 2026.
Someone with demand-response experience from two years earlier still needs to update that knowledge for a new market environment. The ability to transfer experience and learn new rules matters more than an inflated requirement for years under an exact title.
This does not mean recruiting without foundations. It means identifying a strong relevant foundation and an achievable development plan.
Name the actual job within the VPP team
Resource aggregation and customer development require one capability profile. Platform dispatch and algorithm optimisation require another. Trading strategy and market analysis require a third.
UB hunter encounters briefs that still use older titles such as energy-management engineer or electricity trader while asking for substantially different VPP responsibilities. That mismatch can lengthen a search before the first candidate is contacted.
Write down the business model, resource portfolio and work the role must own. Then examine whether the required combination exists in the market, whether the role should be divided and which adjacent talent pools are most relevant. A clearer brief is often more useful than a larger volume of CVs.