53. Technology for Managing Distributed Energy Resources

Technology for Managing Distributed Energy Resources. With the growth of distributed energy resources, including rooftop solar, wind turbines, battery energy storage systems, electric vehicles, and demand response technology, distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS) are becoming increasingly important for utilities. Brad Williams, vice president of Industry Strategy with Oracle Utilities was a guest on The POWER Podcast. He touched on a number of topics, including how DERMS are helping power companies, how electric vehicles are challenging the industry, and how utilities are dealing with the proliferation of edge devices and data. Williams said managing the variety of resources that exist will be a key to meeting renewable energy standards in the future. “Being able to manage these resources—whether they’re distributed energy resources or electric vehicle charging equipment—being able to manage those and forecast—predict—what their operation will be is going to be critical for utilities to be able to fully embrace these renewables standards, because by nature renewable energy is intermittent, which means utilities will have to do more to manage the demand side.”