Event Description

New to demand flexibility? This interactive pre-conference session is designed to help you build a strong foundation in demand response (DR) and virtual power plants (VPPs) and understand their growing role in today’s evolving energy landscape. Through real-world examples, guided discussion, and hands-on activities, participants will explore how DR programs work, how VPPs aggregate distributed energy resources into dispatchable grid assets, the technologies that support them, and the role customer participation plays in grid flexibility and reliability.

Whether you work for a utility, implementation firm, consultancy, technology provider, or are simply looking to expand your understanding of grid-interactive programs, this session will provide practical context and terminology, from foundational DR concepts to the mechanics of VPP aggregation, to help you engage more confidently in flexibility conversations throughout the conference.

You’ll leave this session able to:

• Describe the foundational concepts and purpose of demand response and demand flexibility programs within the modern electric grid, including how and why the industry is evolving from event-based DR toward broader, continuous flexibility strategies.
• Differentiate between common types of demand response and demand flexibility programs and their applications.
• Identify key technologies and customer engagement strategies used to support demand flexibility initiatives.
• Examine how demand flexibility contributes to grid reliability, resilience, resource adequacy, and the integration of renewable energy at scale.
• Apply foundational demand flexibility concepts to real-world program examples and industry scenarios you are likely to encounter in your work.