America's Utility Of The Future Takes Shape In Illinois, Ohio, And Minnesota

This past March, the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC) initiated NextGrid, an 18-month, consumer-focused collaborative process to “transform Illinois’ energy landscape and economy.” Specifically, Next Grid aims to uncover opportunities to value and optimize distributed energy resources (DERs) like rooftop solar panels or energy efficiency, and facilitate grid decarbonization.  As the power sector and technology industries converge toward DER integration, NextGrid will highlight opportunities to enable a more dynamic relationship between customers and their utilities. Diverse voices like ComEd, Environmental Defense Fund and Citizen’s Utility Board have praised NextGrid’s efforts, and the latter two are collaborating on a parallel effort building a new regulatory framework that increases customer and community choice among energy suppliers, drives economic development and updates utility business models.