At DTECH 2026, I moderated a panel on how to unlock grid affordability with DERs. I went into this session with a belief: DER flexibility can unlock lower cost grid capacity and help utilities make better use of infrastructure they already have.
After nearly 30 years working inside utilities, across regulation and technology, I have seen how long it takes for new resources to become something utilities can to rely on. It also only happens if utilities can see those assets clearly and trust them enough to plan and operate around them.
So, the panel pressure tested my belief, looking into the day to day questions and challenges that utilities face:
- Obadiah Bartholomy, Manager, Distributed Energy Strategy at SMUD, spoke from inside a utility that has been operating DER programs at scale.
- Benjamin Lee, Director of Distribution Planning and Grid Modernization at Electric Power Engineers, brought a planning and engineering lens shaped by work across many utilities.
- McGee Young, Founder and CEO at WattCarbon, focused on measurement, verification, and the trust gap that often sits between DER potential and operational use.
What followed in the panel was a discussion about what utilities are dealing with now, what is slowing progress, and where it makes sense to start.
Why DER flexibility is being taken seriously now
One thing we aligned on early is urgency. The context utilities are operating in today looks different than even a few years ago.
As Ben Lee reflected, when he started his career, DERs were largely treated as a problem to manage around. The focus was on interconnection and avoiding adverse impacts to the grid.
That framing no longer works. Ben noted that across North America, utilities are now looking at demand forecasts that nearly double over the next 25 years. The conversation has evolved from “how do we deal with DERs” to “how do we unlock value from what is already connected.”
From a utility perspective, this marks a real change. For years, the question we asked was how to tolerate DERs on the system. Now the question is whether utilities can rely on them to deliver grid services under real operating conditions.
McGee Young was more direct. “We’ve never encountered a situation where all of a sudden people are coming to us as utilities saying, ‘I need 100 megawatts, tomorrow.’” Ten years ago, even ten megawatts would have felt ambitious. Now, the grid is being asked to respond at a scale and pace it was never designed for.
Obadiah Bartholomy set that urgency in operational reality. At SMUD, EV adoption alone grew by roughly 25 to 30 percent in a single year. As he put it, “This is coming at us very quickly. The pace that we need to expand our grid and come up with DER solutions is faster than ever before. Utilities can be quite slow, so we’ve got to start adapting now.”
DER flexibility is one of the few levers available today.
Affordability depends on DER trust
As the discussion continued, a theme emerged: the limiting factor for DERs is confidence.
Utilities are being asked to rely on assets they don’t own and that behave differently from traditional infrastructure. They’ve also often lived in a utility’s customer programs rather than operations. To treat DERs as grid assets, utilities need confidence that they will show up when called and deliver value at the right place and time consistently.
McGee shared a story from earlier work where demand response was excluded from consideration simply because, in the words of a utility representative at the time, “we don’t trust it.”
That comment captures the heart of the issue. Without trust, DERs never make it into serious planning or operational decisions.
He went on to explain why this distrust runs so deep. Utilities have historically operated with imperfect data, and many DER programs were designed around customer benefits first, and grid impact second. That equation is now more balanced. “We’re really counting on this to keep the lights on,” McGee shared.
In that context, performance evidence matters in a different way. From my experience inside utilities, confidence comes from long periods of demonstrated performance that operators can review, question, and learn from.
“Measurement and verification has gone from a nice to have to a prerequisite,” McGee said. Without consistent data, engineers and customer program teams cannot trust each other. Markets eventually also can’t deliver to the best of their capabilities based on what’s actually needed on the grid.
Obadiah offered a counterpoint from the utility side. At SMUD, trust has been built through repetition and transparency. “We’re four years into operating our thermostat program,” he said, meeting regularly with energy traders and planners to review event performance, load shapes and limitations. Ten years ago, those conversations did not happen, but today, they’re central to building operational confidence.
Visibility is the enabler
Obadiah described how SMUD is pulling device level data into grid operations, feeding it into grid edge systems and validating performance continuously. For assets like thermostats and EVs, operators need to understand that something responded – plus, what it was doing beforehand. “You need to know what this thing had to do before,” he explained, especially when those assets are being considered for planning and dispatch.
Ben expands that view. Visibility starts with understanding where future constraints will appear and whether DERs are even located where they could help. Many utilities, he noted, are still at the stage of simply building an inventory. “A lot don’t even have that,” he said, making it hard to plan for flexibility at all.
From my perspective, this is where affordability can start to take shape. Visibility obviously doesn’t automatically make DERs cheaper. However, it allows utilities to value flexibility properly, compare it with traditional investments, and use it where it actually makes sense.
Too often, DERs and traditional infrastructure are evaluated in separate lanes. From a utility standpoint, that separation makes decision making harder.
Ben was also clear on this. DERs are not the solution for everything. In many cases, wires will remain the most cost-effective option. The value appears when utilities can compare alternatives side by side. Wires, non-wires, or a mix of both.
When DERs are treated as one tool among many, their contribution to affordability becomes easier to assess and defend.
DER portfolios are messy by nature
Another moment that resonated was McGee’s description of the industry as being in an awkward adolescent phase.
We often talk about DERs as if they are one thing, but they’re really not. Batteries, EVs, thermostats, heat pumps and even insulation all affect load differently, with different levels of controllability. As McGee put it, “Our potential is unlimited,” but managing that potential introduces “massive complexity.”
The challenge is managing a growing portfolio of assets that behave differently, are often customer owned, and sit at the grid edge. That complexity cuts across planning, operations, and customer programs.
Those teams often work with different assumptions and different data. Obadiah described the work required to bridge those groups so DER performance becomes visible in the same way to planners, operators, and customer program teams.
Ben summed it up as: “Everyone has to be on the same page.” Without shared language and shared visibility, DERs don’t become assets the grid relies on.
Where to start
The closing advice from the panel was practical.
At SMUD, Obadiah shared how long range distribution planning has been essential to understanding where DERs could defer or avoid capital investment. Their current planning points to between half a billion and two billion dollars of potential grid investment over the next 15 years. “We can’t build our grid that fast,” he said, which is why DER solutions now have to be factored in.
He also highlighted the importance of investing early in the operational stack. It has taken years to deploy ADMS, DERMS and grid edge tools, but without them, operators can’t see, forecast or dispatch flexibility with confidence.
McGee focused on building confidence through delivery. “Take the bites that you can achieve in the next year, the year after that, and the year after that.” Those early results create evidence utilities can use to support larger commitments over time.
Ben closed with a reminder that this transition is not happening in isolation. “No one in this room is alone,” he said. Utilities are at different points on the same journey.
From my experience working inside utilities, seeing real results from peers often builds confidence faster than any pilot.
A final reflection
What came through clearly is how DER confidence develops inside a utility – something that’s not changed in my years in the industry, irrespective of the impetus for it. Visibility into where DERs are and how they perform matters more when that information is shared across teams. Planners need to understand where DERs fit to then help operators see they perform consistently and reliably.
When those pieces come together, flexibility moves into decision making. And that’s the point where distributed assets can start being relied on as a genuine source of affordable grid capacity.
