EPRI’s roadmap for distributed energy.
Michael Howard is president and chief executive officer of the Electric Power Research Institute, known also as EPRI. Howard began his career in 1980 with Westinghouse Electric Corp. as an applications engineer for fossil and nuclear digital control systems.
In 2014 we published a paper at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) to introduce our concept of The Integrated Grid, a cost-benefit framework that will focus on the widespread deployment of distributed energy resources (DERs). At that time rooftop solar stood front and center as a bellwether technology - creating a new type of grid that differs fundamentally from the one dating to the formative years of Edison and Westinghouse.
Many groups and individuals have offered their visions and pragmatic observations about how this new 21st Century grid will operate when it fully integrates thousands of rooftop solar panels, residential battery packs, and perhaps millions of battery-driven cars and trucks that will alternately draw power and yet also feed it back into the system. Sensors and digital technologies will join the mix - some from familiar technology companies, and perhaps others from app shops in some tinkerer's garage. Microgrids also may emerge, to compete for customers across today's familiar residential, commercial, and industrial landscapes.