The Department of Energy (DOE) has released its new strategic plan for increasing the use of distributed energy resources in the United States. Distributed energy resources are non-centralized methods of meeting electricity needs, including distributed generation (generating power at or near its point of use) and a wide variety of energy storage and energy efficiency technologies. In the short term, the DOE’s strategic plan focuses on developing “next generation” distributed energy technologies and addressing the institutional and regulatory barriers that interfere with the development of distributed energy resources. A summary of the plan can be found on the DOE Web site at www.energy.gov, or the entire report, called The Strategic Plan for Distributed Energy Resources, can be found at www.eren.doe.gov/der.
