We kicked off the month in San Diego with a busy week that included two insightful industry events. First event was hosted by PLMA (The Flexible Load Management Community) and the Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative (SECC). This new experience was designed for utility professionals interested in load flexibility, distributed energy resources (DERs), and residential customer engagement.
As customer-sited DERs and load flexibility programs become essential for delivering reliable and affordable electricity, PLMA and SECC successfully merged two existing DTECH events—PLMA’s Symposium on DER Grid Services and SECC’s Consumer Symposium—into a single program. This combined initiative explores two key angles of the energy transition: grid operations and customer engagement. Utility speakers were bullish on growth in distributed energy resource integration, and noted Virtual Power Plant resources can be added more quickly than traditional natural gas power plants to meet new demand. (Speakers also suggested the VPP term should really be called distributed power plants – there’s nothing “virtual” about them.)
The annual DTECH event was once again a major success, welcoming over 18,000 industry professionals and over 800 exhibitors. With more than 42% of attendees representing utilities, the conference continues to serve as a vital hub for decision-makers driving the future of grid modernization. It was a pleasure connecting with so many of our members and partners, including edo and Universal Devices. A particular highlight was seeing the new use case demonstrating building and device automation using OpenADR 3 Price Signals and Local AI through the NuCoreAI Foundation. NuCoreAI is an open source building management platform which lets implementers and customers easily add support for local and wide area protocols. For example, to add Matter support, you can just add a Matter Plug In, similar to adding an app to your smart phone.
Throughout the week, the Alliance highlighted several key developments that continue to shape the energy industry including:
- Matter Integration: we continue to see progress on the new specification that enables OpenADR and Matter to work together, facilitating consumer-friendly demand response across appliances, EV chargers, and storage systems.
- OpenADR 3 Momentum: Following our 2023 launch, we are seeing significant growth in certified products and a clearer understanding of the unique benefits OpenADR 3 offers compared to IEEE 2030.5.
- VPP Expansion: OpenADR's role in Virtual Power Plants continues to grow, evidenced by the DOE-backed program with Marin Clean Energy to integrate solar and storage with California utilities. Community Choice Aggregators (CCA) like MCE are a new class of OpenADR adopters.
- Global Growth: Our reach continues to expand with substantial new activity across the United States, Japan, and Europe.
DTECH in the US remains the premier event for transmission and distribution. This year's technical program featured over 275 sessions covering AI, DER integration, and cybersecurity, alongside new focuses on Data Centers and the San Diego Decarbonization Demonstration Project.
Be sure to visit our LinkedIn page to view videos from our members recorded directly from the exhibit floor. We look forward to carrying the momentum gained into the remainder of 2026 and we look forward to participating again next year in Atlanta, GA!