“The utility, a stakeholder that often flies a bit under the radar, will be an essential part of a sustainable zero-emission vehicle future.”

“Utilities have a unique opportunity to make strategic upgrades and investments to address not only concerns around grid resiliency and cybersecurity, but growing social equity concerns and competitive threats on multiple fronts.”

“We still are the most oil-dependent state in the nation and the most oil-dependent electricity systems. Our cost of energy remains extremely high. The sweet spot for these new technologies is it’s easier for them to be cost competitive here.”

“At the end of the day, companies are going to have to reliably be able to say, this is the situation from a full ESG standpoint in terms of the supply chains being utilized.”

“I don’t think this move to a more decarbonized grid happens unless we do it at the edge of the grid. That’s my first belief. Tightly coupled to that is the understanding that it’s one thing for us all to have solar or electric cars. But if you can’t manage those assets in a coordinated way, it’s kind of useless.”

“What we’re starting with is a form of automation and to be able to interact with the DER. That’s our bedrock. With that platform capability, what those algorithms are doing can be for capacity management or for more classical microgrid-type applications.”

“Maybe we need to change distribution system to some other name because distribution used to be, I have a substation and the power flow is going to flow one way. But there are bidirectional power flows when the sun is rising or setting, or the wind is blowing.”

“Because of electrification and digitization, we see the management of digital distributed energy resources is everywhere. That’s something we’re seeing more and more in the U.S. We’re seeing that in Australia, and we’re starting to see that in Europe. That’s the buzz on the floor.”

“What we see are two big trends. Number one is electrification of the economy to meet sustainability targets. We believe electricity will become the backbone of the energy system. The second one is electricity needs to come from carbon-free generation.”

Senior experts explain technology that can have the greatest impact on distribution grid efficiency and resilience.