With rising demand putting pressure on the system, a new group has launched to encourage distributed solutions such as virtual power plants that can be deployed quickly and cheaply.
“Right now, those are two of the biggest issues that we have on hand: affordability and reliability,” Katherine Hamilton — acting executive director of the new group, Common Charge — said in an interview. “And, so, the way we want to do that is to maximize distributed assets that are already being developed and can be plugged into the grid, and to ensure everybody has access to those technologies and those applications.”
Common Charge is a coalition, not a trade group. While it includes companies in the distributed energy resource industry, it also includes nonprofits and consumers, Hamilton said. Founding members include Advanced Energy United, Charge Ahead Partnership, Coalition for Community Solar Access, Eco Capital, Institute for Local Self-Reliance, Pivot Energy, Solar United Neighbors, Sunrun and Vote Solar.
“Distributed solutions often are not even considered in the mix as part of the solution set for mitigating for rate increases and prices going up,” Hamilton said. “So, we want to unlock that and make sure everybody has access to those solutions.”
The distribution system is state regulated, and how much distributed resources are used varies by jurisdiction, so part of the group’s efforts is to figure out best practices and ensure they are adopted as widely as possible.
“If you try to follow the distributed energy resource ecosystem, it is very diverse and very disaggregated,” Hamilton said. “And what we’re trying to do is bring a little more organization to that and then drive a lot more impact.”
Distributed resources are at work in different regions, with Common Charge pointing to PJM’s dispatch of thousands of megawatts of demand response during heat waves this year. New York delivered 6 GW of distributed solar early and under budget in 2024. New England benefited from behind-the-meter solar this summer as it helped meet high demand reliably.
ERCOT has a pilot program providing the grid with nearly 60 MW of power from customer-sited assets, and microgrids in Texas have helped keep hospitals running. In a recent test in California, 100,000 distributed assets simultaneously discharged to the grid for two hours, functioning like a power plant and helping to cut peak demand.
“From a small business improving operations through an energy management system, to a community leveraging solar to save on energy bills, to homeowners enjoying the comfort of smart thermostats, millions of distributed assets already exist, and more are waiting to be leveraged in a modern, coordinated energy grid,” Hamilton said. “These assets are proven to increase reliability, lower utility costs and grow local economies.”
Some of the distributed technologies like solar panels are tied to climate change and the divisive politics surrounding it, with skeptics dominating the federal government now, but Hamilton said Common Charge was focused on more bipartisan issues.
“We’re trying to address two of the big issues that [exist] regardless of whether people are talking about climate change or not, and we’ve just seen as demand rises and more strain is put on the grid — from data centers, from increased manufacturing, from electrification — that affordability and rates are going up,” she added. “Affordability is huge, and that’s regardless of what’s happening on the climate side, regardless of what’s happening on the federal side; it’s really just about affordability on a very day-to-day, kitchen table issue.”
The other major issue implicated by demand growth is reliability, which has been a focus of the Trump administration, and distributed resources can help there, Hamilton said.
Former FERC Chair Pat Wood — now CEO of Hunt Energy Network, which is deploying distributed assets across ERCOT — endorsed Common Charge’s mission. He is working on a parallel effort by the Pew Charitable Trusts with former New York Public Service Commission Chair and PJM COO Audrey Zibelman to expand the use of DERs around the country.
The Pew effort is to give decision-makers, which include utilities, state regulators, governors’ offices and even federal officials, a detailed plan for maximizing the benefits of DERs. Wood said he benefited from similar resources while working to restructure Texas’ electricity market in the 1990s when he chaired the Texas Public Utility Commission.
“What we’re trying to do with this group is put out, not just the principles, but how do you do it?” Wood said. “What do you need to address, for interconnection costs, for timetables, for standardization of equipment, for rates, for customer engagement or other customer protection aspects to it, which we’ve learned from all the other industries that just because they’re a competitor, it doesn’t mean they’re nice.”
The rules need to be balanced so that customers’ privacy is protected without being so onerous they hold back the deployment of DERs to benefit the broader grid, he added.
“We’re in the mode of no megawatt left behind, because with all this kind of electrification of everything, and then, of course, the data tsunami that’s kind of sweeping over everywhere, we’re going to need power coming off every corner of the grid,” Wood said.
The distribution grid has been used to ship power one way historically, but recently that has changed, with advances in computing enabling appliances from smart thermostats to water heaters, pool pumps and plug-in cars to help balance the power system.
“There’s just so much more on the grid than when we opened up the Texas market, or when I was at FERC and we were getting the final rules done on the transmission grid,” Wood said. “That same zeal and effort need to continue all the way to the meter.”
FERC has issued major orders on tapping the demand side to benefit wholesale markets in the past, and numerous states have held “grid of the future” proceedings, but both Common Charge and Wood think now is the time that the technologies will really take off.
It is twice as expensive to build a natural gas plant as it was five years ago, and while renewables have helped keep wholesale prices in check, that has not flowed through to the distributed grid, with the rates rising.
“The regulated rates are going up way faster, and the competitive rates coming down, [and they] kind of net each other out,” Wood said.
The promise of competition was lower prices overall, not just shifting costs from the competitive side of the industry to the regulated side, Wood said, and enhancing DERs can make that promise come true. Now with the pressure of rising demand helping push prices even higher, it has attracted more attention from politicians, with governors and legislators around the country focused on ensuring affordability. Wood said that is not a bad thing.
“They can help create the investments and certainty for generators to come in to help push the monopoly utilities to open up their grid and embrace new technology to incentivize customers to get smart and to use their power in the market to discipline price and service,” Wood said. “I mean, who better than the governor or even a president to do that?”
