Ok ya’ll, before you dive into NY Climate Week craziness next week, we wanted to remind you to grab your DERVOS ticket while the price is still at the lower tier.
We have a killer lineup of speakers and wanted to send out a sneak peak of some initial badass DER experts who will join us on stage on November 5.
We’re super excited about this batch of speakers. They’ve been up to amazing things lately and will bring the spicy details to DERVOS:
Emerald AI (along with NVIDIA, Google, Anthropic) just launched a new data center flexibility alliance called AEMA that seeks to change the game on Data Center grid interactivity.
Base Power recently announced utility programs in Texas, PJM, and Illinois to turn home backup into a grid resource. Base also just dropped one of the deepest dives we’ve ever seen on using aggregated DERs to enable new large load interconnections.
QCells just finished building the largest solar cell factory in the US and inked a partnership with Microsoft to power their AI data center demand.
Planted Solar just raised a big Google-backed Series-B to scale its robotic solar installation technology that promises to dramatically lower installed solar project cost.
Redwood Materials is expanding its partnership with Crusoe to use second-life batteries and solar to power modular data centers.
And here’s a refresher on what we’re up to at DERVOS 2026. Come join us!
The High-Level
When: November 5th, 2026
Where: Duggal Greenhouse, Brooklyn Navy Yard, NYC
Tickets: $899 full price, $699 for a limited time only
You can expect a full day complete with
Incredible speakers and panels
Topics that actually matter with unrestrained hot takes
Awesome showcases from some of our favorite companies
Time to hang with a seriously amazing group of peers
A big ass party at the end
The Big Theme: Everything is DER
Five years ago, distributed energy was still treated like a sideshow to the “real” power system. Today, it increasingly is the only viable solution to the myriad woes facing the power system. Data centers are building their own massive behind-the-meter energy systems. Companies are turning flexible load into hundreds of megawatts of capacity. Batteries and solar are becoming plug-and-play consumer products. Utilities and grid operators are procuring distributed capacity at scale. And as interconnection queues, transmission planning, and institutional decision-making become increasingly sclerotic, customers are simply deciding to take care of their own power needs.
That’s what we mean by Everything is DER: not that everything is small, or even literally “distributed,” but that the center of gravity is shifting toward energy resources that are closer to load and controlled by those who need the power. Sometimes that shift is bottoms-up, sometimes it’s centrally planned, but either way, DERs aren’t the sideshow anymore. They’re the main event.
Some key topics we’ll explore:
Demystifying AI & Data Centers - What the hell is going on in these things? How much of this power demand is real? Will it keep growing exponentially or are we near the top? How is this reinventing infrastructure development? Is BYOP the path for industrial demand growth?
SolarMaxxing - A new era of solar is upon us. Industrial-scale solar and battery project designs are being reinvented to serve on-site loads, at high reliability, and quickly. Will we see $3/w 24/7 FIRM solar + storage in the near future, as Jesse Peltan prophesies?
Massive Top-Down DERs Deployment - Whether it’s vertically integrated IOUs placing batteries throughout the distribution grid, hyperscalers contracting to deploy hundreds of MWs into ISO markets, or utilities working with residential battery suppliers to free up capacity in their system, it’s clear that DERs no longer need to be sold one at a time. There’s a centralized path to scale, but does it align with distributed principles?
The Wide-Open State of Power System Planning, Regulation, and Expansion - Has the “deregulated” power system shown it is able to grow? Or is a return to the vertically integrated IOU required? Are interconnection processes doomed to perpetual sclerosis? Will governors continue to assert their will as the grid becomes one of the largest election issues and utilities wind up in the crosshairs of the media? More than ever in our lifetimes, it feels like just about anything is possible over the next few years. Under the pressure of massive demand, our institutions are failing and the form of response most likely is uncertain. Whatever happens, this is the moment that will be written about in the history books.
Last chance to get involved:
Interested in sponsoring the event this year? Reach out to nicole@dertaskforce.com to learn more.
"Planted Solar just raised a big Google-backed Series-B to scale its robotic solar installation technology that promises to dramatically lower installed solar project cost."
How is this considered DER?
DER stands for DISTRIBUTED energy resources.
This is utility scale resources. You are trying to co-opt the narrative that DER includes the new term "hyper-scaling." it does NOT. End users will never use Planted Solar technology. This is only for large scale projects where transmission, realestate project management and other soft costs will be shifted onto the end user of the generation.