Launching Plug and Play Distributed Energy Resources Into the Future

Plug and Play Distributed Energy Resources will supercharge the energy ecosystem

Currently, deployments of innovative distributed energy resources (DERs) are being held back by one important thing. It is costly in time and effort to get them to work together. With interoperability for the electric grid, envision a neighborhood has solar generation directed to EV charging and storage during times of high production and low costs. When the sun sets, stored energy is used to meet the local increased load, reducing stress on the grid and maintaining comfort and convenience for the customers. This future is what the finalists of the Plug and Play DER challenge worked to create in an Energy Service Interface (ESI).

Find out how interoperability will benefit the grid, how the solutions proposed could work in practice and the steps needed to launch Plug and Play DER. You’ll also learn how to access the ESI design concepts to inform your DER integration solution and how you can get involved in making these solutions a reality.

Key insights

• Developing innovative integration approaches that enable DERs to work together with the grid will create broad shared economic, environmental, and quality of life benefits
• The key is an open, non-proprietary interface that can apply to any DER technology with broad support from technology suppliers
• Interoperability is difficult, but if we can define common, high-value use cases of shared benefit, together we can move forward faster.

What’s in the report

• The purpose of the Plug and Play DER Challenge
• The characteristics of the Challenge solutions submitted by the three finalists
• Insights and lessons from the Challenge
• Four core principles the industry can follow to make DER integration simple and reliable
• Four key actions to launch Plug and Play DER
• Resources including links to the solutions concepts and interface design approaches