Article 5:
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, about half of U.S. electricity customers are connected to the grid via smart meters and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). As distributed energy resources continue to proliferate – and they will – utilities that haven’t jumped on the AMI bandwagon might want to start soon.
Why? Because by 2023, GTM Research expects what it considers to be the five classes of DER – solar, storage, small combined heat-and-power systems, electric vehicles (EVs) and smart residential thermostats – to reach as much as 104 gigawatts of flexible capacity. Ben Kellison, Grid Edge Director at GTM Research, has noted that this is almost as much power as the Texas grid operator, ERCOT, can generate.