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Powell: Orchestrating distributed resources flattens peak grid demand better than legacy infrastructure

Mary Powell · The future of the home solar market · Jan 31, 2022 · at 32:55

Mary Powell, CEO of Sunrun, argues that distributed energy resources provide superior resilience compared to legacy centralized grid assets.

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“What with distributed Technologies utilized well in a way where you're like this, the conductor of the symphony orchestra of devices, right? You can create the kind of resilience that you could only really dream of and reliability of from a, like, grid perspective. Because, so again, you know, what we also saw is that through greater and greater aggregation of these distributed resources, Again, we could move away from talking about, like, beating the peak to flattening and crushing it, and basically kind of making it disappear over time, because you have so many devices to orchestrate, versus grandpa's grid of, you know, of, you know, large, big assets, right, that move in large, big ways, and then something goes offline, and then you have to have so many others lined up behind it, so again,”

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