The Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) on Monday, Nov. 13, will release a draft comprehensive requirements document for distributed energy resources management systems (DERMS) and welcomes review and comments from industry participants.

To create the DERMS requirements document, SEPA began working with a utilities-only working group in January 2016. Co-led by representatives from Southern California Edison, Duke Energy and ComEd, the working group convened as a means of ensuring utilities reduced their risks of procuring a system that falls short of their operational requirements. In addition, these requirements will inform and guide industry solution providers in their own product development efforts.

“We are committed to facilitating these important conversations in our industry to accelerate the transformation required to accommodate DERs (distributed energy resources),” said Sharon Allan, SEPA’s chief innovation officer. “We welcome industry feedback on the DERMS requirements and expect to create other requirements documents in the future to foster innovation and hasten deployments.”

“We chose to collaborate with peers to gain wide-angle view of the grid impacts DERs present and how utilities might best meet them,” said Erik Takayesu, Southern California Edison’s director of grid modernization. “This document represents informed observations from utilities professionals in operations, strategy and information technology functions. We’re eager to see industry comments as we innovate solutions for our grid of the future.”

After months of meetings, the SEPA Grid Management Working Group invites new industry participants from both the utility and the vendor communities to review its draft DERMS Requirements document and submit commentary on it. The document can be downloaded at DermsTerms.org.

SEPA also plans to conduct a meeting on January 22, 2018 in San Antonio, Texas in association with DistribuTECH 2018. For more information about the meeting, contact Sharon Allan at sallan@sepapower.org.

About SEPA

The Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) is an educational nonprofit working to facilitate the utility industry’s smart transition to a clean energy future through education, research, standards and collaboration. SEPA offers a range of research initiatives and resources, as well as conferences, educational events and professional networking opportunities. SEPA is founder and co-sponsor of Solar Power International and winner of the Keystone Policy Center’s 2016 Leadership in Energy Award.

About DistribuTECH

DistribuTECH is the leading annual electric power transmission and distribution conference & exhibition event that addresses technologies used to integrate and deliver electricity from its generation sources to customers’ meters and beyond.