All Things DER: How to Ensure Reliability and Sustainability When Embracing New DER

by Dr. Elizabeth Cook, General Manager of Advanced Grid Solutions, Duquesne Light Company

Welcome to the All Things DER podcast! In this podcast, we’ll be digging in, defining, and discussing where the new energy economy is heading with electric industry leaders, and explore all the ways that distributed energy resources can modernize and improve our ever-evolving power grid.

In today’s episode, we’re talking with Delvin Stephens, the Project Manager of DER Implementation at Con Edison. We discuss the importance of ensuring reliability with the introduction of new DER and how to create impactful change across the industry by being a lifelong learner, as well as ways to get various industries involved in creating a greener energy future. From the use of secondary grids to decentralization of the grid, we dig into a variety of ways to troubleshoot the rapid-paced challenges that face the power industry in successfully implementing new technologies and emerging DER.

Here’s what you’ll discover:

  • How an experience as a design engineer in 2010 lead Delvin back to school to equip himself with the knowledge to solve unique DER-related problems
  • Why being a lifelong learner is essential to continually solving the complexities of DER implementation
  • How new technology has allowed the use of DER on a secondary grid, and why this matters to the industry as a whole
  • How to get involved in the world of green tech no matter what industry you are in, from coding, to policy regulation, to engineering, and more
  • Why decentralization may be the key to ensuring proper reliability while embracing new DER
  • How allowing an opportunity for everyone to participate in a greener energy future is essential to providing the proper incentives to create a value of change that propels us forward into the future power grid of tomorrow