To me, DERVOS 2025 matched the energy of the pre-2016 season Cubs convention; a ‘what if this year is our year’ energy with infectious and optimistic discussion buzzing about. Although some people forget this (shamefully), the Cubs went on to become World Series Champions in the 2016 season…So, why is this year ‘the year’ for distributed energy resources (DERs)?
There are two problems today that DERs can clearly solve. First, we are in a period of significant load growth, with 128 GW expected in the next 5 years (1) driven largely by data centers, large commercial and industrial loads, and electrification. Second, electricity prices are increasing across the country. Together, these issues form “The Electricity Gauntlet”, coined by Andy Lubershane (2). According to the Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory and the Brattle Group, the “nominal (not inflation adjusted)…average retail electricity price increased by 23% from 2019 to 2024 and 32% since 2010.” Notably, these issues are very nuanced and not merely a simple cause-and-effect. Load growth from data centers is not the core reason for increasing electricity prices. It is much more convoluted, in fact “researchers…found that there isn’t a single factor behind the rising rates” (3). Data centers are just a single reason among many. An important nuance on the national rise of rates to note is that “when adjusted for inflation, real prices in 2024 were the same as 2019 and 8% lower than 2010” (4). At risk of going down this rabbit hole (which is not the purpose of this article), I defer to Lisa Martine Jenkins’ breakdown of this datacenter/rate increase discussion in “Why are electricity prices going up?” from Latitude Media (3).
That being said, understanding these two issues is critical to understand why DERs are poised to meet the moment: because there “is actually a problem that we can solve”, CEO of Voltus, Dana Guernsey said at DERVOS. Rather than using on Transmission and Distribution (T&D) capacity buildout, which come with high costs and lengthy deployment cycles, Non-wire alternatives (NWAs) and DERs provide an alternative solution that is flexible, cheaper, and quicker to deploy. DERs have the availability, technological maturity, and scale that they previously haven’t had to be the World Series Champion of the Electricity Gauntlet.
As a utilities consultant with West Monroe, my focus is on advanced distribution management system (ADMS) and distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) operations and strategy. The key question I brought to DERVOS, the 1-day conference dedicated to all things DER, held on Governors Island, NYC, was twofold: “What is the playbook for utilities to incorporate DERs into their strategy, and what is the benefit?” I learned that not only do DERs provide flexibility as a more affordable solution to traditional capacity build out, but that decentralization fundamentally creates reliability and resiliency. By building strategies with a focus on DERs as the champion solution of a more flexible, resilient, and reliable grid, utilities can drive towards addressing load growth prudently. Or, if they don’t, they will be driven to do so by the market. More specifically, this playbook for utilities’ DER utilities would include:
Deferring capacity upgrades and bringing DERS online faster by increasing T&D % utilization. This would be achieved by 1) targeting specific feeders with flexible DERs (Batteries and other Energy Storage) for peak load shaving and 2) enabling flexible interconnection to throttle load or generation based on day-ahead forecasts.
Integrating Virtual Power Plants (or rather Distributed Power Plants @ Sunrun) into Grid DERMS by aggregating BTM assets by class on local feeder and substation levels, with a focus on electric vehicles (a.k.a. Vehicle-to-Grid or V2G).
An emerging underlying theme from DERVOS present in each of the ThunDERdomes, or panel discussions, was that collaborative, cross-industry technology/policy discussions are needed to revise market incentives and drive healthy decentralized competition for T&D capacity upgrades. To the benefit of the entire electric power industry, utilities need to actively engage in these discussions and proactively incorporate outcomes into their long-term strategic roadmaps, to create the beautifully orchestrated grid that we all know is possible, inevitable, and what we desperately need to be the backbone of the electro-tech, solarpunk future of the United States.
Data centers are a prime example of this policy reform that requires cross-industry discussion and has intense implications for the future. This was discussed at length in ThunDERdome #1: Big DERs Energy (BDE) with panelists Hallie Carrao (Technical Program Manager, Google’s Advanced Energy Labs), Sean Jones (Staff Business Development Manager, Tesla Megapack), Tyler Norris (J.B. Duke Fellow & PhD student, Energy Systems, Duke University), and Vic Shao (CEO, DC Grid). As the standard of 1 GW data centers grows, so does the need for flexible policy solutions to interconnect them. To put the 1 GW scale into context, ConEd, whose service territory includes all of New York City and Westchester county, operates 5-6 GW of load on average, and a peak summer load of 12 GW, for about 20 hours a year. Today, there are only around 30 examples of 1 GW point loads: these are aluminum smelters! And, they all have bespoke agreements.
To successfully integrate 1 GW data centers into the grid, utilities and data centers must develop similar bespoke agreements. The nature of the agreement depends on the type of data center in question. Different data centers run different workloads, and these workloads have varying levels of flexibility, depending on the cost to interrupt the workload. For example, IT workloads are more easily flexed since they are less expensive to interrupt than an AI workload. The contractual discussion that ensues between utility and data center is needed to understand how far out in advance a data center is notified to adjust their workloads, and how many events or hours in a year they need to curtail. When utilities can understand the types of workloads the data center will run, and the data centers can understand the local grid constraints, healthy compromises can be struck. However, oftentimes the utilities aren’t ready to support this type of flexible interconnection. This is when data centers turn to Vic Shao and DC Grid to provide a temporary solution, or other innovative solutions like a data center that has a huge battery (5).
This leads to the key question posed by DER Task Force Co-Organizer Duncan Campbell from ThunderDOME #1: “Can we scale compute with DERs only?” The answer right now seems to be a hybrid approach including utility interconnection, DERs cited on-prem, and flexible interconnection contracts; “a whole new power paradigm,” as Vic said. The playbook to do this today, and especially renewably and affordably, is still being written. My takeaway is that if utilities want to attract data centers to their service territory, and do it both affordably and sustainably, they’ll need to focus on implementing Grid DERMS' flexible interconnection use case, as well as develop innovative, highly bespoke interconnection agreements that provide flexibility, yet stability and predictability for interconnection.
Data centers with extremely high point loads require highly permissioned agreements. For smaller, behind-the-meter (BTM) DERs, the permission structure to enable quick adoption is largely…permissionless? In ThunDERdome #2: Permissionless DERs Wait For No One, panelists Kevin Chou (Executive Director, Brightsaver), Bala Ramamurthy (CEO, Critical Loop), Cole Ashman (CEO, Pila Energy), and Stephan Scherer (Managing Director, Craftstrom) agreed that by front loading policy and enabling a permissionless interconnection process, we could expect DER adoption to accelerate from 5% of buildings to 50-70%. Permissionless DERs can quickly enable renters, not just homeowners, to install DERs in their homes at an affordable cost.
Pila Energy is selling a sleek, scalable, networked in-home battery solution that optimizes home energy use, and provides resiliency for disaster response. Plug your Pila battery into the wall outlet, your appliance into Pila, and you’re set. Craftstrom provides a similar plug and play solution, bringing Germany’s balcony solar craze to the US. In the last 5 years, Germany has installed over one million balcony solar systems and has a combined capacity of 1 GW (6).
Both companies, live on stage, set up their devices in just minutes. Combining innovative human-centered designed DERs and the front loading of interconnection red tape accelerates the adoption of permissionless DERs. From my perspective, utilities should be a part of these permissionless DER interconnection conversations; in the future, they will benefit from the broad adoption of DERs. Right now, VPP programs do not have the capacity to make a meaningful impact on resolving feeder level constraints as they have low proliferation. But in a world of higher DER penetration, say 70%, if these devices are enrolled in VPPs, and are aggregated at the feeder level, they can provide a new tool for utilities to defer capacity by dynamically addressing grid constraints from load growth. Broad adoption of DERs creates decentralization and resiliency when the grid fails, and reliability when orchestrated in Grid DERMS.
Orchestration between the Customer DERMS and Grid DERMS was the focus of ThunDERdome #3: Deploying & Orchestrating GWs of Distributed Grid Capacity. Panelists, Ryan Long (Executive Vice President, Xcel Energy), Seth Frader-Thompsom (CEO, EnergyHub), Dana Guernsey (CEO, Voltus), and Chris Rauscher (VP of Grid Services & Electrification, Sunrun) discussed policy revision, the core question being, ‘how do you relate flexibility into money?’. When describing how the current incentive structure of grid services is currently misaligned, Dana Guernsey, CEO of Voltus, said, in one of my favorite quotes of the weekend, “The cucumber costs as much as the caviar…you are paying by weight”. Nick Chasset (CEO, Octopus Energy US) in his “Circuit Breaker”, DERVOS’ version of a fireside chat, with Jigar Shah (Partner at Multiplier and former Director of the DOE Loan Programs Office) agreed that the “keys are time of use pricing, price transparency, and the PJM market to unlock competition”. On the utilities side of the equation, “IOU’s [Investor-Owned Utilities] lack motivation to provide flexibility to customers”. Motivation for change could come from utility ratemaking reform such as Performance-Based Ratemaking (PBR). This provides an alternate incentive structure based on reaching agreed upon targets, often in support of distributed energy resources (7).
Although there is ongoing arduous discussion on what the correct incentive structure should be, this is exactly the type of dialogue that is necessary to accelerate the ongoing, essential culture shift from traditional capacity planning to a hyperfocus on NWA’s efficient utilization of today’s available capacity. This culture shift faces many barriers inside the utility. As Nick said, “Utilities do not have a single CIS [Customer Information System]; data is fragmented and thus they do not have confidence that their flexibility will respond.” Furthermore, Grid DERMS implementations take years to strategize, scope use cases, select vendors, pilot use cases, and fine-tune. Most utilities will not have their foundational Grid DERMS capabilities of DER visibility, control and forecasting, until late 2020’s. Even further down the roadmap still are the more advanced capabilities that come with full ADMS <=> Grid DERMS integration and utilizing DERs in ADMS optimization algorithms. Cross-industry policy discussions that result in utility ratemaking reformation, the creation of new marketplaces, and FERC 2222 coming in 2028, will push the IOU monopoly structure that has invested $1.3 Trillion over the last decade to reinvest the $1.1 Trillion planned from 2025-2029 (1) into DER and NWA enablement strategy. Bridging the gap between Grid and Grid-Edge/Customer DERMS, as this ThunDERdome did, will create a resilient, distributed, secure, and orchestrated grid, the foundation of the United States as an Electro-tech-state.
ThunDERdome #4: Energy Dominance and the Electrostate was my favorite discussion of the weekend. Facilitated by DER Task Force Co-Organizer, James McGinnis, panelists Drew Baglino (CEO, Heron Power), Tristan Doherty, (Chief Product Officer, LG Energy Solution Vertech), Sam D’Amico (CEO, Impulse Labs), and Dean Walter (Principal, Ember Futures) explored one key question: Why do we want to become an Electrostate, and how do we get there? The why question is simple: electric technology is more efficient, has better control, and performs better than internal combustion. The how? Incentivize manufacturing of the “Electric Stack”. For the complete story on how China has come to dominate manufacturing of the Electric Stack, please read the tremendous essay by Packy McCormick and Sam D’Amico, titled “The Electric Slide” (8) To summarize the 40,000-word essay and the discussion of ThunDERdome #4, the electric stack turns electricity into motion with four foundational technologies, 1) Lithium-Ion Batteries, 2) Magnets and Electric Motors, 3) Power electronics, and 4) Embedded compute. These technologies were invented in the west, US, Japan, and the UK, in the 1960s and 1990s. China made strategic acquisitions of these technologies and developed the “fifth infinity stone”, which is the vertical integration of the industrial capacity to manufacture mass volumes and process engineer them to be highly reliable. China made investment into manufacturing of the electric stack very easy with clear conscious far-sighted policy decisions, with the goal of raising GDP and GDP/capita. Comparatively, the United States operates in a short-sighted agenda, where the investments have not been as obvious. Thus “the Electric Stack center of gravity has moved from America and Japan to China” and “by controlling these four technologies, China has become the world leader in everything from EVs to drones to electric bikes to robots” (8). China dominates the manufacturing might of the future right now, but it is not a given that it will continue that way. When asked if the US will become an electro-tech-state in 50 years’ time, the panel all agreed – a resounding Yes. The US is motivated to separate its reliance on China manufacturing as a point of National Security. Demand for Made-in-America is key for investments to be made here. Made in America government incentives could help accelerate the onshoring of the electric stack manufacturing, but the main engine will largely come from the massive consumer base primed to buy better performing electric products from companies like Pila Energy, or Impulse Labs. I believe that this narrative around the future of the United States as an electro-tech-state, combined with the architectural aesthetic and community-centric vision of the solarpunk movement, has the potential to resonate strongly with Gen Z’ers like me, by providing a vision for a tangibly better future.
DERVOS convened the brightest thought leaders to define what that better future is and how we get there. We know this future is possible because the technology is ready. It is the policy book and processes that have lagged, a result of the incumbent system resisting change. These discussions in each ThunDERdome, 1) creating bespoke data center interconnection agreements, 2) front-loading decisions on permissionless BTM DER interconnection, 3) reforming utility ratemaking to incentivize T&D % utilization, and 4) incentivizing domestic manufacturing in the Electric Stack, are all happening now. It is essential that Utilities are strategically engaged in this inflection point to accelerate and alter the trajectory towards a healthier future state of the electric grid. A future where ADMS and Grid DERMS are harmonized with Grid-Edge/Customer DERMS to provide flexible solutions that solve system challenges, increase T&D % capacity utilization, defer T&D upgrades, drive down energy delivery costs, and enable resiliency from decentralization.
My first DERVOS was incredibly insightful and so much fun. Hearing from the top thought leaders on the state of DERs in the United States in 2025, providing me a clearer vision into the future energy and the United States, I can’t help but feel optimistic. At the end of the conference, there was an apology made for the long lines for lunch and coffee. In my point of view, this was the perfect time to reflect and connect on the ThunDERdomes with whoever I was waiting in line with. As DER Task Force Co-Organizer Colleen Metelitsa kicked off the conference with, “DERVOS is about community, discovering the frontier, and to connect with the pioneers who are stepping up to the moment and seizing it.” Thank you to all the DER Task Force Co-Organizers, first for organizing this event, second for DER-pilling me, and third for living what you preach. This entire day of DERVOS, followed by New Energy – the Solar Powered Music Festival, was run as a microgrid, powered by solar PV electrons, stored by mobile batteries from Solarpunks. That is the power of what the future has in store, and that is what makes me so optimistic. Susan Kish from Constructive, the non-profit we have to thank for the construction of the venue, put it best in her closing remarks: “Take all of the amazing optimism and share that optimism with the world…anyone can understand that”. That is what happened at DERVOS 2025, a generation and storage of the optimistic vision of a solarpunk, distributed energy future; now, we’re ready for dispatch.
Nate Twardock is an Experienced Consultant based out of Chicago in West Monroe’s Utilities Practice where he is focused on ADMS implementation, DERMS strategy, and control center operations. He graduated from the University of Minnesota’s College of Engineering with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering in 2023. You can reach him at [email protected].
1 | Edison Electric Institute, & Anonymous. (2024). Annual Report of the U.S. Investor-Owned Electric Utility Industry. In Edison Electric Institute, Financial Review.
2 | Lubershane, A. (2024, February 27). The electricity gauntlet. Steel For Fuel. https://steelforfuel.substack.com/p/the-electricity-gauntlet
3 | Jenkins, Lisa Martine. “Why Are Electricity Prices Going Up?” Latitude Media, 23 Oct. 2025, www.latitudemedia.com/news/why-are-electricity-prices-going-up/. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
5 | Spector, Julian. “In a First, a Data Center Is Using a Big Battery to Get Online Faster.” Canary Media, canarymedia, 24 Oct. 2025, www.canarymedia.com/articles/batteries/aligned-data-center-get-online-faster. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
6 | Thomas, M. (2025, July 9). Balcony solar is booming in Germany. Balcony Solar Is Booming In Germany - by Michael Thomas. https://www.distilled.earth/p/balcony-solar-is-booming-in-germany
7 | Performance-based Regulation (PBR) for the Hawaiian Electric Companies (Docket No. 2018-0088). (n.d.). https://puc.hawaii.gov/energy/pbr/.
8 | McCormick, P., & D’Amico, S. (2025, August 26). The electric slide. Not Boring by Packy McCormick. https://www.notboring.co/p/the-electric-slide