Inspiring experience on grid edge technologies
February 21, 2025
Wilber takes a selfie at the 2025 IEEE PES Grid Edge Technologies Conference and Expo in San Diego in January.
Michelle Wilber, Beneficial and Equitable Electrification lead at ACEP, recently had an inspiring experience on grid edge technologies at a conference.
While heavily attended by utility personnel, the also gave Wilber the opportunity to learn from and network with other university and national lab researchers, technology vendors and other organizations working to enhance the productivity, efficiency and interoperability of the electric grid.
Grid edge technologies operate at the edge of the grid 鈥 inside buildings, behind meters and along the distribution system.
Hot topics at the conference included sustainability and resilience, electrification, artificial intelligence and distributed energy resources.
Many utilities are reporting that they expect large load growth from data centers and electric vehicles, or EVs, which individually or collectively require a large amount of electricity to operate. They are looking for viable ways to manage this growth.
One solution that was explored extensively at the conference was to aggregate and collectively manage many of these grid edge energy resources to manage load and avoid costly and long-lead-time power plant construction. Such resources include smart EV chargers, programmable thermostats and solar-plus batteries 鈥 a hybrid system where the solar panels will generate electricity when the sun shines and the batteries will store the unused electricity.
Some utility representatives were skeptical about whether such aggregations could be predictable enough to ensure adequate resources in the electric system. Others are rolling out day-ahead hourly pricing pilots that modern smart devices can take advantage of to better align these distributed energy resources.
Wilber and her team hope to investigate the potential for these distributed energy resources to solve some of our uniquely 草榴社区n challenges. They are investigating how EVs, heat pumps and other technologies can help to manage costs and maintain a reliable grid in the context of rural microgrids as well as within the Railbelt.
鈥淭his was a great opportunity to learn about the latest approaches of grid edge technologies nationally and globally,鈥 Wilber said.