The electric power industry is confronting a challenge that is becoming clearer by the month: electricity demand is growing rapidly, while the infrastructure required to serve that demand cannot always be expanded at the same pace. Data centers and artificial intelligence infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, transportation electrification, building electrification, and broader industrial growth are changing electricity demand across the United States. Meeting that challenge will require more generation and more transmission, but it will also require utilities to make substantially better use of the resources and infrastructure already connected to the grid.
That is why a new report from the GridWise Alliance deserves attention. Distribution Investments to Meet Rising Electricity Demand: Technologies to Harness Distribution-Level Resources and Enable Grid Flexibility, published in August 2026, offers a thoughtful and comprehensive examination of how distribution-level resources can become a meaningful part of the solution. More importantly, the report places those resources within a much broader vision of an integrated electric grid – one in which transmission, distribution, generation, customer resources, communications, software, sensing, and advanced planning increasingly work together rather than being considered independently.
CTC Global commends the GridWise Alliance and the many organizations and individuals who contributed their expertise to this important work. The report acknowledges contributions from Beam Reach Consulting Group, Landis+Gyr, Tennessee Valley Authority, Black & Veatch, Anterix, Guidehouse, Bandera Electric Cooperative, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Itron, and GE Vernova, among others. Their collective participation reflects something important about grid modernization itself: no single organization, technology provider, utility, regulator, or segment of the industry can solve the challenges ahead independently.
Moving Beyond Either/Or
One of the most important ideas in the GridWise Alliance report appears very early. Meeting rising electricity demand should not be framed as a choice between expanding transmission infrastructure and harnessing local energy resources. The report instead calls for a coordinated strategy that does both. It explicitly recognizes that transmission expansion is necessary and must accelerate, while also explaining that distribution systems and customer-sited resources can provide flexible and often faster solutions as additional generation and transmission infrastructure is developed.
That distinction matters.
For too long, discussions about grid modernization have sometimes been organized around competing solutions. Should we build more transmission or optimize the transmission system we already have? Should we add generation or better manage demand? Should utilities invest in centralized infrastructure or distributed energy resources? Should we build new facilities or increase the capability of existing assets?
Increasingly, the answer is simply: yes.
The magnitude and pace of today’s electricity demand growth require the industry to pursue multiple strategies simultaneously. New infrastructure will be necessary. Existing infrastructure must also work harder. Distributed resources need to become more visible and controllable. Transmission corridors need to carry more useful power. Communications, sensing, forecasting, analytics, and advanced planning need to help operators understand what is happening throughout the system and respond accordingly.
That is the essence of an integrated grid.
Demand Growth Changes the Equation
Another particularly valuable contribution of the GridWise Alliance report is its explanation of why investment in distributed energy resource technologies is becoming increasingly urgent. The original policy discussion surrounding DER aggregation was heavily influenced by FERC Order 2222, which created a framework allowing aggregated distributed energy resources to participate in wholesale electricity markets. GridWise argues that circumstances have now changed substantially. Regulatory compliance remains important, but rapidly increasing electricity demand is becoming the more powerful economic and operational driver.
Data centers and AI infrastructure are creating very large and often geographically concentrated loads. Transportation and building electrification are changing load profiles throughout distribution systems. Industrial electrification and advanced manufacturing are creating additional requirements in regions already experiencing infrastructure constraints. At the same time, rooftop solar, battery storage, electric vehicles, smart thermostats, and other customer-sited resources are proliferating throughout the distribution network.
The result is an interesting transformation. The distribution system is becoming both a source of new electricity demand and a potential source of capacity and operational flexibility.
GridWise’s report explores what is required to unlock that potential.
Turning Distributed Resources into Grid Resources
A battery sitting in someone’s garage is not automatically a grid resource. Neither is an electric vehicle, rooftop solar array, smart thermostat, water heater, or controllable industrial load. To become meaningful system resources, these assets must be visible, measurable, predictable, communicable, and – in appropriate circumstances – controllable.
That requires an increasingly sophisticated technology ecosystem.
The GridWise Alliance identifies Advanced Metering Infrastructure, smart inverters, DER submetering, voltage optimization, and advanced communication networks as important foundational technologies. It also examines software-based platforms including Distributed Energy Resource Management Systems (DERMS), Advanced Distribution Management Systems (ADMS), Geographic Information Systems, Virtual Power Plants, analytics platforms, and advanced retail billing. Finally, it emphasizes advanced integrated planning and DER/load forecasting as essential processes for making these technologies useful at scale.
None of these technologies operates entirely in isolation. Communications enable visibility. Visibility enables analytics. Analytics improves forecasting. Forecasting improves planning. Planning informs investment. Control systems can then help utilities and aggregators respond dynamically to changing system conditions.
The result is not simply a collection of smarter devices. It is a more intelligent electric system.
Flexibility Is Becoming a Grid Resource
The report devotes considerable attention to a word that has become increasingly common throughout our industry: flexibility.
GridWise describes flexibility as the mechanism through which growing electricity demand creates value for distributed resources. Rather than limiting the concept to batteries or conventional demand response, the report considers flexibility across customer classes and across multiple time scales—from fast-response resources supporting real-time system needs to day-ahead scheduling and ultimately long-term planning decisions.
The implications can be substantial. Citing 2025 research from Duke University’s Nicholas Institute, the report notes that the existing U.S. power system could potentially accommodate between 76 and 126 GW of additional load across the 22 largest balancing authorities if those loads could be curtailed for only a very small percentage of their maximum annual uptime.
The broader lesson extends well beyond DERs.
When infrastructure is difficult, expensive, and time-consuming to build, increasing the productivity of existing assets becomes extremely valuable.
The Same Principle Applies to Transmission
This is where the GridWise Alliance’s distribution-focused work intersects naturally with CTC Global’s experience on the transmission system.
The fundamental principle is remarkably similar.
Just as DERMS, VPPs, advanced communications, forecasting, and other technologies can unlock capacity and flexibility that already exists within the distribution system, advanced transmission technologies can help utilities obtain substantially more capability from existing transmission corridors and infrastructure.
Advanced conductors can increase transmission capacity while reducing thermal sag and electrical losses. Other Grid Enhancing Technologies can improve situational awareness, optimize power flows, and provide operators with better information about actual system conditions. In appropriate applications, these technologies can allow utilities to increase the productivity of existing infrastructure while longer-term transmission expansion proceeds.
This should not be viewed as an alternative to building new transmission.
It is a complement to it.
GridWise makes essentially the same point about distributed resources. Local flexibility does not eliminate the need for transmission expansion. Transmission expansion does not eliminate the value of distributed resources. A modern grid will need both – and much more.
From Physical Infrastructure to Observable Infrastructure
There is another important connection between the GridWise vision and the evolution occurring across the transmission system.
The report repeatedly emphasizes the importance of communications and real-time information. Advanced communication networks – including fiber – are described as foundational infrastructure for connecting devices, substations, utilities, aggregators, and control systems. These networks provide the information pathways necessary for increasingly sophisticated monitoring and control.
We see the same evolution occurring on transmission systems.
Modern grid infrastructure increasingly needs to do more than carry electricity. Utilities also need better information about the physical condition and operating environment of critical assets. That philosophy is helping drive technologies such as CTC Global’s ACCC GridVista™ System, which brings distributed sensing capability into the conductor itself through embedded optical fiber.
The larger trend is significant: grid infrastructure is becoming both more capable and more observable.
That combination – greater physical capability together with improved information – will become increasingly valuable as utilities operate systems closer to their limits while accommodating new loads and increasingly dynamic power flows.
Planning Across the Entire Grid
Perhaps one of the most important sections of the GridWise Alliance report concerns Advanced Integrated Planning. The authors describe the need to integrate planning across distribution, transmission, and energy supply and argue that today’s challenges require more coordinated, data-driven, cross-functional processes.
That observation deserves considerably more attention throughout the industry.
A transmission line does not know whether congestion belongs to the planning department, operations group, engineering organization, regulatory team, or asset-management organization. A distribution feeder does not recognize the organizational boundary between DER planning and load forecasting. A data center seeking interconnection does not particularly care which internal department’s budget is responsible for the infrastructure preventing it from connecting.
The grid simply responds to physics.
Our planning processes increasingly need to reflect that reality.
When utilities evaluate technologies based on their total system value rather than exclusively through individual organizational silos, the range of available solutions becomes much larger. A technology that increases capacity may simultaneously reduce losses, improve reliability, defer capital investment, accelerate interconnections, improve resilience, or provide operators with better system information. Those benefits should be considered collectively whenever possible.
Technology Alone Is Not Enough
The GridWise Alliance also deserves credit for recognizing that deploying technology is only part of the challenge.
A substantial portion of the report examines the non-technical conditions necessary for distribution flexibility to succeed, including market design, resource valuation, measurement and verification, participation and interconnection rules, contract structures, customer engagement, viable aggregator business models, and cybersecurity.
That is an important reminder for every segment of grid modernization.
Innovation succeeds when technology, economics, regulation, standards, engineering practice, utility operations, manufacturing capability, workforce development, and customer needs move forward together. A technically excellent solution that cannot be specified, permitted, financed, installed, operated, or appropriately valued will never deliver its potential benefit to the grid.
We Will Need All of It
Perhaps the most valuable message in Distribution Investments to Meet Rising Electricity Demand is therefore not about any single technology.
It is about abandoning the search for one.
The electricity system now being asked to support AI, data centers, advanced manufacturing, electrified transportation, increasingly distributed generation, storage, and decades of economic growth will require a portfolio of solutions. We will need additional generation. We will need substantially more transmission. We will need stronger distribution systems. We will need DERs, energy storage, demand flexibility, advanced conductors, Grid Enhancing Technologies, better communications, improved sensing, sophisticated analytics, better forecasting, and much more integrated planning.
Most importantly, we need to stop thinking about these resources as competing solutions.
GridWise Alliance’s work provides an important framework for doing exactly that. Its conclusion that flexibility-enabling technologies can help utilities manage rising demand while obtaining greater value from resources already distributed throughout the electric system is both practical and timely.
CTC Global congratulates the GridWise Alliance, its members, the contributing organizations, and the individual experts who helped develop this important report. Their work adds valuable perspective to an industry-wide conversation that is becoming increasingly urgent.
The grid of the future will not be defined by one technology, one resource, one department, or one segment of the electric system.
It will be defined by how effectively we make all of them work together.
