California’s Plan: Crowdsource Distributed Energy to Replace Grid Upgrades
California regulators are on the cusp of breaking open a long-awaited opportunity to enlist rooftop solar, behind-the-meter batteries and other distributed energy resources (DERs) to substitute for expensive grid upgrades.
The goal of these state-by-state efforts is to find ways for utilities, customers and third-party aggregators to capture the grid value of DERs. One clear opportunity is getting them to respond to utility signals to reduce peak loads on local grid circuits.
