DERMS: How it’s evolving and shaping the energy transition

At Distributech 2023, Josh Wong, GE Vernova’s General Manager of Grid Orchestration, and Kimberly Helm, General Manager of Opus One DERMS, sat down together to discuss several critical topics around the future of distributed energy resource management systems (DERMS).

DERs and associated renewables are critical components of the energy transition, yet bring with them their own unique challenges. Every year, tens to hundreds of thousands of DERs and renewable power sources enter the market and connect to the grid. Utilities must find a way to safely, reliably, and economically manage these resources while continuing to keep the lights on for consumers.

For example, electrified transportation and heating alone can potentially double to triple to today’s electricity demand. There are new stakeholders to manage with the rapid emergence of aggregators and DER service providers, along with new electrical patterns like back feeds, high voltages, protection issues, stability, phase balancing, intermittency and more – any of which could happen across or distribution. That presents even greater challenges, given that traditionally T&D teams work in silos with little communication or collaboration between them. Finally, there are new regulations to navigate, with mandates like FERC 2222 and EU Green Deal being applied and enforced at the state and national levels. Utilities must adapt quickly to ensure compliance with these new laws and regulations.

DERMS are essential to helping utilities manage these and other challenges posed by DERs and renewables penetration. Take GridOS DERMS – a robust solution providing end-to-end DER management capabilities, allowing utilities to monitor, forecast, program-manage, control, optimize, and transact DERs while meeting regulatory and market requirements, facilitating a cleaner grid, and promoting a sustainable energy future. DERMS also integrates seamlessly into GridOS® – the first software portfolio designed exclusively for grid orchestration. The addition of GridOS’s orchestration capabilities unlocks horizontal scalability, Zero Trust security, hybrid cloud deployments, automated deployments and testing, and a federated grid data fabric with a common network model across transmission and distribution. The combined power of a DERMS with orchestration capabilities ensures utilities can accelerate their grid modernization efforts and achieve greater operational efficiency, all while staying on top of future innovations.

Read on to hear Josh’s and Kimberly’s thoughts on how the evolution of DERMS is driving the energy transition, accelerating grid modernization, and empowering what's happening at the edge of the grid.

Josh: The biggest problem facing customers is the energy trilemma. As we make the grid cleaner, we must also maintain the reliability and affordability of the grid.

To do this, we need to combine DERs, the edge, and clean energy generation. We must also ensure the grid isn’t a bottleneck to the energy transition by choking or impeding the flow of clean energy. Finally, we cannot sacrifice the affordability of the electricity system —we need to make sure that as we go clean, we actually improve the economics of the system.

Josh: The vision for the energy transition has remained fairly consistent - for the grid to become the platform for DERs, enabling us to accelerate the energy transition.

DERMS is now both a platform and a gateway to grid management . It can help the grid remain reliable, flexible, dependable, secure, and affordable as we push toward clean energy.

Josh: What we offer our customers is balance.

We balance sustainability — that’s environmental sustainability, technical sustainability, and economic sustainability. We achieve this by collaborating with customers; understanding their demographics, regulations, and policies; and finding ways to help them navigate the energy trilemma – together.

Kimberly: We’ve been expanding our portfolio recently, which means we can provide a DERMS solution that helps our customers drive their Net Zero goals and commitments faster. We are completing everything from pilot engagements to full global operations at an enterprise level, and we’re doing it fast.

Josh: The priority is modernizing theme grid towards a cleaner, more sustainable future. To do this, we will no longer be looking at DERs or electric vehicles or storage, but looking at the grid holistically.

That’s where GridOS® can help. It’s the first software portfolio designed for grid orchestration, and it can help utilities integrate energy data, network modeling, and analytics in a single place.

Finally, hybrid Cloud architecture will help us scale — not just innovation, but computing power in all parts of the grid.

Josh: I think the next frontier of grid intelligence lies in bringing together expertise around data, optimization, physics-based engineering with the next phase of generative AI.

By combining our engineering knowledge and AI capabilities, we can greatly simplify and accelerate the energy transition for our customers.

To find out more about how we’re shaping the future of the grid, or how we can help you, please contact us at 1-833-690-5552 or visit our utility industry contact page.