WattCarbon and Resilience Energy collaborate on GridSolver to bring DER valuation methodology into the open
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 22, 2026
The OpenEAC Alliance today announced the release of GridSolver, a national map of what the grid needs from distributed energy resources, developed through a collaboration between WattCarbon and Resilience Energy. GridSolver scores roughly 66,000 neighborhoods across the continental United States on the kind of distributed energy resource (DER) their local grid actually calls for, and it does so entirely from public data, with a published methodology that anyone can inspect, reproduce, and challenge.
Resilience Energy joins the OpenEAC Alliance Board alongside the release.
“For too long, the value of a DER has been a matter of opinion, and opinion is a terrible foundation for a market,” said McGee Young, CEO of WattCarbon. “GridSolver starts the conversation about how to value DERs as grid resources with open data and an open methodology, so that the answer doesn’t depend on who you ask. We are glad to have Resilience Energy building this with us and joining the OpenEAC Alliance Board.”
The question GridSolver sets out to answer is one that has bedeviled regulators, grid operators, data center developers, and DER developers alike: what is the value of a DER? For most of the history of distributed energy, the answer has come from bill savings or utility avoided-cost formulas buried in infrequently updated filings, or from wholesale market rules that price a battery in one region differently than an identical battery a few hundred miles away. The value has rested more on the particular rules of a given market than on what the resource actually delivers to the grid.
That ambiguity is no longer affordable. Electricity demand is growing again after two flat decades, and large new loads, data centers chief among them, are arriving faster than utilities can build wires and generation to serve them. Demand-side resources can carry a meaningful share of that growth at lower cost and on faster timelines than new central supply. They will do so at scale only when a market pays them for what they deliver, where and when they deliver it. That market needs a consistent, open way to measure DER value. GridSolver is a first step toward building one.
Why open data and open methodology
GridSolver is built on the conviction that the methodology for valuing DERs belongs in the open, where the whole industry can use it, test it, and improve it.
The tool draws only on public sources: hourly net-load data from all 53 balancing authorities, day-ahead congestion prices from the seven US wholesale markets, and building footprints from NRL’s End Use Loadshapes. The load signal measures how sharply an area’s demand concentrates into a few hours. The congestion signal measures, in dollars, where moving power past transmission constraints is most expensive.
From those signals, GridSolver classifies each location into the DER type its grid pattern favors: solar and efficiency where demand is flat, HVAC flexibility where winter and summer drive the stress, non-HVAC flexibility where shoulder-season congestion dominates, and load shifting where stress recurs year-round. The full methodology, data sources, and limitations are published in an accompanying technical white paper.
Open methodology is what allows the market to scale. When a DER developer, a utility, and a data center can all reference the same transparent framework for what a resource is worth in a given place, commitments can be quantified, transacted, and trusted.
What it unlocks for the market
Standardized, open DER valuation changes the economics of deployment for companies that deploy DERs. Resilience Energy installs solar, storage, and other distributed resources on homes across the country. When the grid value of those installations can be measured consistently and credited transparently, that work becomes financeable at scale, and other companies across the industry can build on the same foundation.
That scale is what makes community-based grid mitigation possible. As regulators in Virginia, Nevada, and elsewhere ask large loads to offset their grid impacts with distributed resources, an open valuation layer lets a data center meet that obligation by investing in the neighborhoods around it: rooftop solar, home batteries, and flexible heating and cooling that bring down bills for ordinary customers, lower carbon emissions, and put hundreds of thousands of people to work installing and maintaining these resources. Local energy delivering local value, measured rigorously enough that every party to the transaction can rely on it.
“There are millions of homes across the country ready to retrofit with solar and storage, today” said Ameet Konkar, CEO of Resilience Energy. “What’s missing is a way to turn this new capacity into a PPA, similar to how large companies purchase renewable energy, so that the financing required by these projects can scale accordingly.”
Explore GridSolver
GridSolver is live at https://gridsolver.wattcarbon.com. The technical white paper, including full methodology and data sources, is available alongside the map. The market feeds refresh daily and the national map re-scores monthly.
The OpenEAC Alliance invites DER developers, utilities, and large-load offtakers to use GridSolver, test its methodology, and join the effort to refine open standards for valuing distributed energy.
About the OpenEAC Alliance
The OpenEAC Alliance is a voluntary, open industry coalition working to ensure quality and transparency in the measurement and verification of distributed energy resources. The Alliance develops and publishes open methodologies for calculating Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs), so that the environmental and grid value of distributed energy can be measured consistently and trusted across the market. Membership is open and free.
About WattCarbon
WattCarbon is market infrastructure for distributed energy resources. Its platform measures, verifies, and certifies the energy, capacity, and carbon attributes of DERs, issuing hourly EACs through the WEATS registry and independent measurement and verification through Aristotle. WattCarbon leads the OpenEAC Alliance. Learn more at www.wattcarbon.com.
About Resilience Energy
Resilience Energy installs solar, storage, and other distributed energy resources on homes across the country, bringing clean, flexible energy capacity to the communities that need it. Learn more at www.resilience.energy.