To meet AI-driven load growth utilities and big tech companies have been building — or reopening — big power plants. Georgia Power, for example, is planning to expand its fleet of natural gas plants. And Microsoft signed a deal last September to re-open Pennsylvania's Three Mile Island nuclear plant

But could we meet a portion of that load growth with distributed energy resources? Pier LaFarge thinks so. 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Pier, co-founder and CEO of Sparkfund. (Energy Impact Partners, where Shayle is a partner, invests in Sparkfund). DERs can come online much faster than large, centralized generation, Pier argues. He makes the case that utilities are especially well-positioned to lead what he calls “distributed capacity procurement” (DCP) of customer-sited solar, storage, and other assets. Shayle and Pier cover topics like:

• How host agreements work, using utility-owned assets sited at customer locations
• How the effective load carrying capability (ELCC) of DERs compares to large, centralized power plants
• The relationship between DCP and VPPs
• The key tradeoff of DCP: DERs are faster to build, but cost more and have lower ELCC than large, centralized plants
• Who should pay for those higher costs?
• Why vertically-integrated utilities are best-positioned to take advantage of the value DCP creates for capacity, distribution, and transmission
• The limitations of DCP at a systems level

Recommended resources

Latitude Media: Can distributed energy answer AI’s power problem?

Latitude Media: Jigar Shah: It’s time for VPPs to get simpler

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com.

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