Here’s the dream: millions of controllable devices—from EV chargers to thermostats, fridges, and batteries—working together to inject power back into the grid. They reduce load when there’s not enough electricity supply to meet demand. They ease transmission congestion and maintain grid frequency. And these devices, collectively called distributed energy resources or DERs, are all controlled remotely by grid operators. 

So how far are we from this dream? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Mathew Sachs, senior vice president for strategic planning and business development at CPower, a company that aggregates DERs and sells DER services to the grid. They talk about where we are on the long and winding path to large-scale deployment of DERs and what it takes to monetize them. They dig in on: 

• EV chargers, the fastest growing category of DERs, as well as V1G and V2G
• How much easier it is to share your financial data with a credit check than to share your energy data with a DER aggregator
• How current rules create obstacles to monetizing DERs
• Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Order 2222 and the status of new DER rules in NYISO and CAISO
• Positive developments like the declining costs of DERs and rising watts per customer acquired

Full transcript here

Recommended Resources:

• Canary: FERC Order 2222: Experts offer cheers and jeers for first round of filings
• Canary: Is ​‘vehicle-to-everything’ charging ready for prime time?
• Catalyst: Tapping the gold mine of consumer energy data

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

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