Energy Academy 2026: Activating Efficiency & Load Flexibility

How to better utilize the ERCOT grid? ⚡️ The 2026 Energy Academy wrapped up its Demand Side Solutions Series last week with two powerful sessions exploring how distributed energy resources (DERs), energy efficiency (EE) tools, and demand management are reshaping the Texas grid from the ground up. The first session in the series was Activating Efficiency & Load Flexibility: Demand-Side Solutions for Maximizing Generation. A special thank you to our speakers, Will McAdams, former Public Utility Commission of Texas Commissioner and President of McAdams Energy Group, LLC, as well as Matthew Boms, Executive Director of Advanced Energy United, for grounding the conversation in the economics, market structure, and policy barriers shaping DER adoption across Texas. Together, our speakers highlighted three key opportunities to accelerate demand side solutions in Texas: 1️⃣ Establishing uniform technical standards for DER interconnection across the state's 63 municipalities, 67 co-ops, and 5 major investor-owned utilities to remove barriers and unlock market potential 2️⃣ Expanding and refining programs like ERCOT's ADER pilot, which has already grown from a 10 MW target to over 100 MW, to better capture the value of aggregated residential and commercial resources 3️⃣ Coordinating the $3B in energy efficiency funding spread across state agencies to maximize impact, especially the 12–14 GW opportunity in replacing electric resistance heating with heat pumps From post-Uri battery surges to Vehicle-to-Grid technology and multifamily heat pump retrofits, demand side solutions are beginning to operate and scale across Texas today. The priority now is ensuring that policy, market structure, and utility incentives evolve to match the pace of innovation. #TexasEnergy #DemandSideManagement #DistributedEnergy #EnergyPolicy #EnergyExperts #ERCOT #TexasGrid #HeatPumps #EnergyStorage