Alan Gooding, co-founder of the United Kingdom’s Smarter Grid Solutions software company, told MISO stakeholders Thursday that distributed energy resources are going to be a “very large part of the energy mix going forward” with emerging technologies that are already affecting the system.

Speaking during a conference call with the RTO’s DER task force, Gooding said large customers are drawn to DERs for price security and as a hedge against global energy scarcity. He said with the industry facing electrification’s increased demand to fuel “heat, transport, cooling and industrial processes,” companies will have to reimagine and retool the grid as part of a massive infrastructure development.

“All of that increased demand, four, five times the demand … will have to be supplied by green energy at the point of use. We’re talking about having to do this within my lifetime,” Gooding said.

He said utilities will need to create DER management systems (DERMS) to access the resources’ full value. DERs need autonomous systems that produce demand and generation forecasts and form dispatch plans, he said.

Gooding said a “maturing sector understanding of DERMS is creating increased confidence to act,” with many DERMS’ requirements quickly becoming standardized. He also said utilities face a range of DER integration challenges that include managing congested interconnection queues, staffing issues, digitalization challenges, data security, grid modernization, and adapting business models.

“We see every utility is going to be on its own DERMS journey,” Gooding said. “We think there’s still quite a journey to go here. Regulations are going to have to catch up with what these assets can technically provide.”

The industry has “so, so much to go” in how DERs interconnect and how the markets adapt, Gooding said. He said DERMS will be key to creating an “integrated ‘ecosystem’ of new and existing systems.”

He also said utilities want to understand how the software works and are no longer looking for their vendors to provide a “black box piece of technology.”

MISO plans to host another DER guest speaker in April. It tentatively plans to gain perspective from a nonprofit DER registry.

The grid operator is awaiting FERC’s decision on its plan to delay integrating DER aggregations into its wholesale markets until 2030. (See MISO Defends 2030 Completion for DER Market Participation.)