Resource adequacy: aggregated distributed energy resources

The law aims to make batteries, demand response, and other grouped distributed resources available as dependable capacity during peak grid needs. It seeks to support reliability, reduce reliance on fossil generation, and prevent duplicate customer payments.

What the law does ​

• Requires the California Public Utilities Commission, working with the California Energy Commission and California Independent System Operator, to improve market-integrated pathways for aggregated distributed energy resources to qualify as local, system, or flexible resource adequacy capacity by June 30, 2028.
• Requires capacity rules to credit qualifying load reductions and energy exports, permit combinations of resource types, and use performance-based, weather-normalized methods where feasible.
• Allows multiple devices behind one utility connection to enroll in separate programs when the same energy or load reduction is not double counted or paid twice.
• Directs the commission to set standards for device-level telemetry if it can accurately measure grid impacts, while protecting consumer data privacy and reducing enrollment barriers.
• Requires rules for exported customer energy that prevent net-energy-metering and net-billing customers from receiving both retail bill credits and aggregated-resource compensation for the same dispatched export.
• Requires the commission to let load-serving entities include qualifying aggregated resources in resource adequacy filings and commission-ordered procurement.
• Requires the commission to recommend updates to the California Independent System Operator's demand-resource and distributed-energy-resource aggregation models by June 30, 2028.

Who it affects ​

• Distributed energy resource aggregators and providers.
• Customers with onsite energy resources, including net-energy-metering and net-billing customers.
• Electrical corporations, electric service providers, community choice aggregators, and other load-serving entities.
• The California Public Utilities Commission, California Energy Commission, and California Independent System Operator.