Digital Grid 2020

The Digital Grid is the next frontier of electric grid modernization, integrating technologies in embedded sensing, advanced intelligence, data analytics and cloud computing to leverage customer-sited distributed energy resources (DERs) to enhance grid flexibility and thereby ensure reliable, safe, affordable, and sustainable electric service for customers. By acquiring and analyzing data from customer devices, the Digital Grid would also enable utilities and their affiliates to provide such value-added services to customers as home automation, monitoring and security, energy management, and equipment diagnostics.

Actualizing the Digital Grid entails an enabling data platform that standardizes how data from customer DERs interface with the grid. This includes defining data interchange requirements among diverse stakeholders and developing supporting systems integration, data security, and data analytics tools, all under the auspices of data governance policies that advance customer choice and control. Developing an enabling data platform is a multifaceted pursuit that will require extensive collaboration between the utility industry and the ecosystem of technology partners and academic thought leaders.

To this end Bits & Watts and affiliate partner Electric Power Research Insitute (EPRI) co-hosted a virtual workshop series in the Summer of 2020. The Digital Grid Virtual Workshops brought together utility and information technology leaders to discuss the development of enabling technologies and data platforms to realize the Digital Grid vision. The dialogue continued with the Digital Grid Summer Webinar Series, featuring experts from diverse backgrounds - academic, technology companies, entrepreneurs, utilities and government - in interactive panel sessions on the latest advances, emerging policies, and breakthrough research on customer DER integration.

Click here EPRI's brief from the series.