Get distributed energy resources under control.
Stage 2: The utility DERMS journey
Your utility has some distributed energy resources in the field, maybe a grid edge customer program (or a few) in operation. Now it’s time to get those assets under control and monetize them.
OATI enterprise DERMS unites disparate assets and systems into a single pane of glass, providing a grounding source of truth for the entire organization.
STAGE 2
Integrate & control
DERs with DERMS
You know what DERMS is — now you need to know whose actually works. At this stage of the DERMS journey, you’re comparing platforms, weighing vendors, and trying to separate polished demos from production reality. This is where claims meet evidence.
The content below is chosen to help you pressure-test what you’re being told: technical specifications you can hold vendors to and a look at how OATI’s most-deployed DERMS performs.
What to focus on now: validating claims against specs and real deployments before you shortlist.
For program managers: Building an evaluation you can defend
Now you’re running the process, and you’ll be accountable for the recommendation. You need vendor criteria that go beyond the demo: implementation timelines, integration requirements, and what “production-ready” really means in practice. This stage is about assembling evidence you can put directly into an RFP and a real deployment you can point to, so your evaluation rests on substance rather than sales narratives.
For operators: Will it integrate, and will operators trust it?
A platform is only as good as its fit with the systems already on your desk. During evaluation, focus on how the DERMS connects to your EMS and ADMS, whether it gives operators a single unified view instead of another silo, and whether the workflows hold up under real-time pressure. The question that matters most: is this something your control room will actually adopt, or work around?
For market teams: Does it support the markets you actually operate in?
A DERMS that can’t participate in your ISO or RTO’s specific market products isn’t useful to you, no matter how polished the demo. As you evaluate, the questions get precise: which market constructs does the platform support, how does it handle telemetry and settlement requirements, and can it scale aggregations without breaking compliance? Pressure-test every platform claim against the market realities your team lives with every day.
For executives: Weighing risk, references, and return
At the decision point, your lens is risk and return. Is the vendor proven at utilities like yours? Does the financial model hold up under scrutiny? Are there reference deployments you can trust? What you want at this stage is a real, comparable deployment and the substance behind the platform’s claims— enough to sponsor a decision with confidence that it’s been validated where it counts.
Resources for this stage
of the DERMS journey.
Short-term load growth strategies
Our short-term load growth whitepaper looks at digital strategies for maximizing output from existing distributed energy resources as demand from data center development, industrial manufacturing, and broader electrification rises sharply.
NCEMC deploying OATI real-time DERMS
Taking the years-long partnership to a new level, North Carolina Electric Membership Corporation and OATI are implementing a real-time DERMS across NCEMC’s 26 locally owned rural electric cooperatives to improve grid reliability across the state.
Utility DERMS in action
Utility leaders face a pivotal moment: balancing grid reliability, distributed resource integration, and modernization. But finding proven, verifiable DERMS case studies can be challenging in a murky vendor pool.