Q&A with Nick Tumilowicz: How DER Programs Inform Grid Planning

Key Takeaways 

• DER enrollment provides the foundation, but utilities need insight into where resources are located, how they perform and how much flexibility they can reliably depend on.
• Delivered capacity and event performance provide a clearer picture of grid value than participation metrics alone.
• DER performance data can help planners evaluate flexibility alongside traditional infrastructure investments.
• As DER programs mature, utilities are looking for ways to incorporate DER insights into planning, forecasting and operations.

Utilities have spent years building participation in distributed energy resource (DER) programs. Electric vehicles, battery storage, demand response programs and virtual power plants continue to proliferate across the globe.

Historically, DER programs and distribution planning have operated in separate workflows, according to Nick Tumilowicz, director of product management, distributed energy management at Itron. One focused on enrolling and managing customer participation. The other focused on forecasting load, evaluating capacity needs and planning infrastructure investments.

As participation grows, those worlds are starting to overlap.

What are utilities learning from DER programs today?
Nick: As DER programs mature, utilities are gaining more information about how customer-owned resources perform under actual operating conditions.

One example is Xcel Energy's Renewable Battery Connect program. Working with Itron, Xcel enrolled approximately 5000 customer batteries, representing more than 34 MW of battery capacity available for dispatch during peak load events. This marked a significant milestone in Xcel’s journey toward deploying a battery-focused virtual power plant (VPP).

Programs like VPPs help utilities move beyond enrollment metrics, providing more insight into how customer-owned resources perform during periods of system need and whether they can support reliability.

Understanding what was enrolled versus what was delivered can lead to very different planning assumptions. Fortunately, employing energy forecasting methods get us closer to a deterministic model utilities typically expect. 

How can DER information influence infrastructure planning?
Nick: Consider a feeder where EV adoption is increasing faster than expected. Traditionally, planners may identify a future capacity issue and begin evaluating infrastructure upgrades.

Today, utilities can take a more complete look at the situation. They can evaluate whether flexible resources already connected in that area could help reduce demand during specific periods, how much flexibility is available and whether that flexibility aligns with the projected constraint.

That analysis doesn't eliminate the need for infrastructure investment. In many cases, upgrades remain necessary. But it gives planners additional information about the timing, scope and prioritization of those investments.

What still needs to happen before DERs become a routine part of planning decisions?
Nick: Utilities already have established processes for evaluating load growth, forecasting capacity needs and planning infrastructure investments. The next step is making DER performance and flexibility data usable in those same workflows. 

Planners need confidence that the data reflects how resources perform during real grid conditions and whether that flexibility is reliable enough to support planning decisions.

What outcomes should utilities be measuring?
Nick: Participation metrics are still important, but they don't tell utilities whether a program is influencing grid operations.

Utilities are looking at delivered capacity, event performance and consistency over time. If a resource delivers during one event but not another, planners need to understand that. The goal is to determine whether performance is predictable enough to be considered when evaluating future system needs.

Looking ahead, where do you see utilities focusing their DER efforts?
Nick: The industry has spent years building DER programs. Now it’s focused on putting them to work for the grid. As participation grows, planners have access to more information about what customer-owned resources can reliably deliver under actual operating conditions. That information is becoming a key input for evaluating where flexibility may be useful, where traditional infrastructure investments remain necessary and how those options fit into future planning decisions.

To support that shift, Itron is helping utilities use IntelliFLEX to turn DERs into active grid resources. Learn more at itron.com/intelliFLEX.