Balcony solar and EVs are giving consumers a greater role in grid flexibility

Balcony or "plug-in" solar is rapidly gaining popularity, as it gives consumers who might not have easy access to distributed solar generation a straightforward way to deploy the technology and begin saving on their power bills. Meanwhile, as drivers transition to electric vehicles, the possibility of deploying the batteries as a flexible grid resource hooked up to bidirectional chargers is also growing.

These new technologies are allowing residential utility customers to take greater control over their electricity consumption and spending. But wider adoption has implications for grid safety and reliability, and several states are already moving to regulate and manage the addition of these resources.

In this episode, Dan Testa discusses these issues with Kirsten Errick, an S&P Global Energy reporter who covers renewables. Kirsten interviews Cora Stryker, co-founder of Bright Saver, a plug-in solar company, and Aseem Kapur, chief revenue officer at GM Energy.