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Meeting Urgent Grid Needs with Distributed Capacity Procurement: Xcel Energy’s Approach
Utilities are facing increasing reliability challenges driven by accelerating electrification, weather-driven peak demand and outages. These pressures are exposing the limits of traditional planning and procurement approaches and increasing the need for targeted,distribution-level capacity solutions.
Xcel Energy is deploying Distributed Capacity Procurement (DCP) to address these challenges by linking distribution system needs with bulk power capacity planning. Rather than relying solely on large, centralized investments, DCP enables utilities to identify when, where, and at what scale distributed resources can provide system value alongside traditional infrastructure investments.
The session will share early lessons from Xcel’s evolving approach, including how distributed solutions can be evaluated alongside traditional investments to support system reliability and long-term planning.
