ORIGINAL REPORTING: How Utilities Can Partner With Vendors At The Grid Edge

Partnering for success: Utilities leverage innovative vendor relationships at the grid edge; A new study reports on opportunities utilities could seize to expand distribution system technologies

Herman K. Trabish, February 23, 2016 (Utility Dive)

A new high-level look at distribution system innovation makes one thing clear: Utilities that find and work with innovative private sector players benefit from reaching out. The report from GTM Research describes nine cutting edge projects involving technologies that are changing the distribution system, including energy storage, demand response, data analytics, advanced metering and solar-plus-storage. They reveal an enormous range of distribution system innovation possible for utilities to access through private sector partners.

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Variety seems the only continuous theme in the eight “sub-markets” serving the distribution system. One of the more mature technologies profiled is advanced metering infrastructure (AMI).Utilities see AMI as a pathway to lower operational costs, making managing outages more efficient, and assuring a new revenue stream. But, despite financial and policy drivers, the market is still not thriving. Where AMI deployment is standardized, the paper finds that energy storage installations are still mostly one-off deployments. The microgrid market is just beginning to mature… click here for more

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