With the rapid integration of renewables and distributed technologies into the grid, utilities can no longer feasibly address the challenges of maintaining power quality, balancing supply and demand in real time and ensuring adequate distribution infrastructure capacity with their old systems. To gain a better understanding of what utilities think about a holistic distributed energy management strategy—and what challenges they face and benefits they expect—Itron and Zpryme conducted a survey of 170 electric utilities and collected the findings in a new eBook: Distributed Energy Management: The New Era of Demand Response.



The statistic that most resonated with me from this study is that 71 percent of utilities believe that distributed intelligence and computing power at the grid edge will be critical to effectively manage distributed energy resources (DER). At Itron, we couldn’t agree more. The proliferation of DER requires a distribution grid that responds to changing conditions in real time to meet demand and maintain grid stability. And this requires a network that enables distributed intelligence to make DERs at the grid edge capable of responding quickly and locally to real-time conditions as they occur.

With more than 400 downloads to date, it’s clear the eBook covers an important industry topic. You can download the eBook here.