2027 Event Agenda

In this course, we’ll explore the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of DER management:

• What are DER
• What issues arise as DER proliferates
• Mitigating these issues with DER grid support functions 
• How to manage DER to provide these functions
• Standards to the rescue! Introduction to IEEE 1547-2018
• The broader benefits derived from DER management
• Why DER management is critical for your utility and how to make the business case for investments in a DER Management System (DERMS) and related infrastructure
• DERMS as a step toward ending the vicious cycle and improving customer satisfaction
• How are utilities doing DER management today

Building on last year’s standing-room-only Grid University course on DER Management, this course expands on best practices for distributed energy resource (DER) management from today’s real-life deployments. Throughout the course, audience participation is encouraged, inviting you to share where you’re at in your journey, tailoring the experience to jumpstart your progress in achieving your DER management goals.

The course assumes no prior knowledge; there are no prerequisites. The material is designed for professionals across the industry, engineers and non-engineers alike, for utilities and the broader community.

This course is taught by a recognized leader in DER management, serving as the DER interoperability lead for the nation’s leading DER management project, managing over 10,000 DER directly from the utility control room, receiving such accolades as: SEPA Power Players Utility of the Year; Public Utilities Fortnightly Top Innovators and Foremost Innovator in Distributed Generation; and SunSpec Alliance Open Standards Champion.

Some specific topics we’ll cover:

• A brief overview of the history of our grid and how it’s informed the ever-evolving integration of Distributed Energy Resources (DER): 
• The War of the Currents
• The rise of Samuel Insull’s Commonwealth Edison and the age of state-granted monopoly franchises
• Policy evolution: PURPA - granted DER the right to interconnect; FERC Order 888 - moved power generation into meritocratic markets; FERC Order 2222 - evolving markets to provide more opportunity for DER and enable value discovery
• The economics of grid defection and DER management as a step toward reversing the affordability crisis and averting the “utility death spiral”
• The envisioned “prices to devices” transactive energy future, where customers automatically receive information on capacity scarcity via price signals and automate arbitrage behaviors
• Lessons learned from 21st century case studies in integrating DER and how the industry responded by creating the IEEE 1547-2018 Standard, recognizing the challenges raised by an increasingly distributed grid and how DER can help address these issues with managed grid support functionality:
• Reducing the risk of cascading blackouts with DER ‘ride-through’, setting voltage and frequency shall-trip curves similar to NERC PRC-024 for bulk electric generation. Case studies from Europe, Asia, and the US.
• Increasing hosting capacity and improving power quality by managing DER reactive power support functions, such as constant power factor, constant reactive power, and Volt-VAR. Case studies from the US.
• Further increase hosting capacity with active power management functionality (including flexible interconnection agreements), such as constant active power and Volt-Watt. Case studies from the US and Australia.

And be sure to also attend the afternoon course where we’ll explore ‘how’ to start managing DER today with your existing infrastructure.