Rooftop solar, battery storage, electric vehicles, and energy management devices are all examples of DERs – numerous pockets of energy spread throughout the grid rather than concentrated in a single spot. Unlike centralized sources of power, DERs can make the grid flexible and enable control of both electricity supply and demand in real-time.... See more

Here’s where renewable energy has the potential to really shine, because the energy inputs (water, wind, sun, geothermal) are distributed by their nature, unlike fossil fuels. Local electricity generation can be coupled with local energy storage, like batteries, configured as a community-level microgrid,1 and connected to the main electrical grid.

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