InsideClimate News reported on FERC ruling to open wholesale markets to distributed energy resources, quoting AEE's Jeff Dennis. Read excerpts below and the full piece here.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gave us this kind of news last week with a ruling that says grid operators must open up wholesale markets to "distributed energy resources," like rooftop solar and battery storage.

I got in touch with Jeff Dennis, managing director and general counsel for the trade group Advanced Energy Economy, and asked him to explain what this meant the way he might to a neighbor.

"I've actually tried to explain this to a couple of my neighbors," he said.

He said the FERC order is important because it means that the companies that sell solar, battery storage and EV charging systems will have new opportunities to sell services to the grid. Those services will come from being able to band customers together in large groups...

And by making money from selling to the grid, companies could make their products less expensive.

"Anything that improves competition in the market drives down price," Dennis said...

Some grid operators are already doing some version of this...

But other grid regions, like PJM Interconnection, do not have rules that allow this kind of participation by customer-based systems, Dennis said. The FERC order means that all grid regions need to implement the rules.

Dennis said the implications of the order are potentially huge, leading to a grid that relies less on big power plants and more on customer-owned resources.

Read the full InsideClimate News piece here.