Sean Fleming 

Building a zero-carbon energy system that is safe, reliable, and affordable.

With the rise of smart loads, batteries, and EVs, the success (or failure) of DER programs will come down to customer acquisition costs relative to their load-at-stake.

Two keys for DER deployment

So far, natural gas has done more for decarbonization than wind and solar combined

In their Q3 earnings update, Sunrun’s reported battery attach rates continue to grow, and most new systems now include batteries.

With >2GW of installed battery capacity, it will be interesting to see how these systems get used beyond backup power / self-consumption for things like grid services and feeder-level peak shaving.

We need more dynamism in electricity markets, which (for understandable reasons) have become deeply conservative and rulebound over recent decades.

A few key takeaways from discussions at the recent Progress Conference (hosted by

, and ) and at DERvos (hosted by the ):

  1. There is no “one best way” to produce electricity and create energy ab…

Distributed energy resources (DERs, like EVs, home batteries, smart thermostats) represent a potent new tool for managing the grid around peak load. While demand response programs have been around for a while, the increased capacity from EVs in particular is set to supercharge the potential here.

Most folks ‘know’ that the electric grid is built to handle peak demands, often hot summer afternoons or cold winter mornings.

But the variance is extreme: peak loads might be 2x higher than an average hour, and 3x higher than a low hour.

This means there is actually a lot of spare capacity built into the system, capacity that can be bett…