A new ruling issued by the U.S Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) paves the way for aggregated distributed energy resources (DERs) to compete alongside traditional power plants and other grid resources in wholesale markets. Order 2222 will now enable these resources to be bundled together into a single bidding entity and allow DER aggregations to compete in the energy, capacity and ancillary services markets operated by the regional transmission organizations and independent system operators that manage the transmission grids carrying electricity to about two-thirds of the U.S.

Bundled technologies can include energy storage, on-site renewables, energy efficiency, distributed and backup generators, electric vehicles and their charging equipment, and other energy systems common in microgrids. Different distributed technologies can be networked together in this manner, and combinations of generation and load modulation can be deployed simultaneously into one unified market offering.

Projections indicate that 65 GW to more than 380 GW of DERs could be added to power grids over the next four years. The participation of electric storage, intermittent generation, distributed generation, demand thermal storage and other DERs in wholesale power markets will improve grid flexibility and reliability while lowering costs for consumers.