The grid edge revolution is underway. It's finally moving beyond research and planning, and deployment is starting to scale.
But sales cycles are still tough. And that's what we documented in this year's survey.
Since utilities are the most important customers for many distributed energy resources (DERs), we focused our annual survey on the process of selling DERs to utility customers.
For grid edge vendors sitting across the table from utility buyers -- or hoping to engage with them -- this survey is intended to provide insights on adoption drivers.
While there are many types of customers for DERs, distribution utilities are especially important for technologies like grid operations software and equipment, grid modeling and analytics, and billing and customer information systems.
Utilities are increasingly deploying and owning solar and storage as well, and showing a growing interest in consumer services like electric-vehicle charging infrastructure.
Distributed energy is still deeply intertwined with public policy. State, regional, and federal policymakers are continually grappling with the transition of consumers into prosumers, new business models, and how to value the benefits of DERs for distribution grids.
To understand where these parties stand, we laid out a series of 13 questions this year. What keeps you up at night? What is the next big thing? How are you getting ready for it?
We dissected the answers from various perspectives: utility vs. non-utility, management vs. non-management. And raw data is at the end, so you can dig deeper.
