BOULDER, Colo. — Innovations in renewable distributed power generation, along with attractive new financing mechanisms, are providing residential customers with new options to manage their energy use and generate their own power, notes Navigant Research. Known collectively as distributed energy resources (DER), these technologies are causing a broad disruption that is altering the traditional relationship between utilities and their residential customers. According to a report from the research firm, homeowners and other residential customers are on pace to invest more than $625 billion, cumulatively, in DER from 2014 through 2023.

“The growing affordability of DER technologies is giving customers greater control of their energy consumption — turning some homes into miniature power plants that generate all the power they consume and even deliver power back to the grid,” said Neil Strother, principal research analyst with Navigant Research. “Solar PV panels are the most visible technology reshaping the residential power landscape, but there are many others, as well.”

Some of these technologies, such as residential combined heat and power (CHP), are in the early stages of market development, according to the report, while solar panels are more mature. Residential energy storage systems, vehicle-to-grid and vehicle-to-home systems that enable plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) to receive and provide power from and to the grid, and increasingly sophisticated home energy management tools are all likely to deliver more capability to homes and integrate onsite generation and storage in new and innovative ways.

An executive summary of the report is available here.

Publication date: 10/6/2014

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