2027 Event Agenda

NCEMC is a G&T cooperative serving 25 member-owned distribution cooperatives which in turn deliver power to over 2.5 million North Carolinians. NCEMC has a combined ~600MW of DER and DR capacity, including solar, storage and microgrids across its members service territory. Historically used to provide outage mitigation and peak shaving-these DERs now play a broader role into its overall portfolio management process, including load following capabilities. This session shares NCEMC's control philosophy as it prepares for the merging of the IOU's two balancing areas, solution architecture and technology upgrades enabling DER aggregation, optimization and dispatch-enhancing operational flexibility, reducing peak costs and supporting long-term grid resilience.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the system control philosophy and architecture requirements needed to utilize DER for load following
• Explain the methodology for creating aggregated groups of DERs
• Describe how aggregated DERs can be optimized and operated with existing EMS dispatch and AGC capabilities