Global renewable energy capacity has expanded rapidly over the past decade, but the operational systems required to coordinate distributed energy resources in real time are struggling to keep pace.
Electricity networks originally designed around predictable, centralised generation are now managing increasingly dynamic bidirectional flows from rooftop solar, battery systems, EV charging infrastructure, demand response assets and distributed storage operating across multiple ownership, metering, and control environments.
The International Energy Agency projects renewable capacity growth will continue accelerating through the decade as electrification and distributed energy adoption increase globally.
At the same time, utilities, distribution network operators, and energy market participants are facing growing operational pressure associated with feeder-level visibility limitations, renewable curtailment, network congestion and distributed asset coordination.
“The world has deployed distributed generation at extraordinary scale. The operational infrastructure required to coordinate it intelligently has not expanded at the same pace,” said Vinod Tiwari, Senior Advisor- Energy Markets, Arnowa. “That operational gap is increasingly visible in curtailment, coordination inefficiencies, local network constraints, and system reliability pressure. Distributed energy systems require continuous operational visibility and real-time coordination capability if they are going to operate efficiently at scale.”
