2026 Event Schedule

This session will allow the audience to hear from both an investor-owned and a municipal utility about their plans to improve reliability and resilience through the deployment of advanced grid controls. Speakers will share thoughts about their current and upcoming deployments, including a distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) deployment and a microgrid controller/DERMS study. Speakers will present their motivation for the deployment of these controls, the selection process, and their field experience to date. They will also discuss key use cases that they expect these controls to address, such as improving reliability through load growth and/or at high levels of distributed resources, improving resilience through microgrid coordination with utility operations, and the use of distributed resources for the provision of grid services including peak load reduction. They will also share how they are using the Advanced Grid Controls Test Bed at the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR) to de-risk their field deployments. The test bed features real-time software simulations and hardware to realistically represent a power distribution system with industry-standard communications protocols, allowing commercial grid control products to connect as they would in a utility environment.

The audience will leave this presentation with concrete examples of active and upcoming advanced grid control deployments for improving reliability and resilience, and with examples of how utilities can use NLR’s Advanced Grid Controls Test Bed to de-risk field deployments.

Session Sponsored by National Laboratory of the Rockies