In a rapidly changing power environment, electric utilities are under enormous pressure to help reduce carbon emissions. Increasing amounts of renewable energy are coming online to meet the demand for clean energy, making the structure and operation of power grids more complex than relying on a fossil fuel-powered peaker plant. With greater dependence on renewables comes a more variable energy supply. 

In the years to come, utilities will need to integrate their demand-side programs with hundreds, if not thousands, of communication protocols. With so much complexity and specialized knowledge involved, it will be challenging for utilities to master it all. In this playbook, integration experts define the basic technical aspects of device integration and explain why they’re important, including:

• The difference between polling vs publishing APIs
• Data modeling options for extracting information delivered via API
• What data rates are, and why they’re important.​

​