Parallelled with the electricity revolution of the early 20th century, the revolutions of DER, solar, wind, and other decentralized energy sources seemingly has the potential to have a similar effect, and have been steadily gaining popularity with electric utilities. DERs offer a wide range of benefits over their fossil fuel counterparts. Resilience to failure and demand reduction are some of these reasons. However, there are also some concerns with the use of these DERs such as variability, cost, and scalability.
Firstly, solar arrays, wind, and other decentralized energy sources are very resilient to failure as opposed to energy sources tethered to the grid. Given that they are decentralized, an outage or failure in one place is almost impossible to spread or to cause outages in any other myriad of places (“Small-scale power generators critical for a resilient energy grid”). This is in contrast to other grid-locked systems which are much more likely to cause tidal waves of failures and shut downs upon a fallen power line or something else similar.
Secondly, use of DERs allow electric cooperatives like JCREMC to “flatten the curve” of energy demand during the most demanding times of the year. During some of the most demanding times of the year, DERs are able to supply their own energy to the homes of members. Cooperatives are also able to circumvent the need for paying the high premiums for peakers during high use (Richmond and Greene). This is because the homes running off of solar power are decentralized, and able to utilize more of their own energy instead of that from the grid. This significantly lowers the possibility of needing to rely on outside sources to meet high demand, and the savings from that circumvention could be passed on to the members.
DERs do have some potential downsides, however. For one, as opposed to more common sources like natural gas or coal, the production of energy with DERs are variable. The sun is not out all of the time, and the wind is not always blowing. And so, if electric utilities become more reliant on their members having decentralized power, it could lead to potential periods of under-generation in times where there is a lack of sunlight or wind (Ruggles). This also causes problems in terms of complexity. Dealing with tens of thousands of small individual decentralized “plants” instead of one massive one presents numerous challenges related to this coordination (Ngueko).
Secondly, cost and stability go hand in hand and are some of the biggest downsides to DERs. In contrast to coal, natural gas, and other fossil fuel energy generation, DERs have very high upfront costs to members (Quadisat). This limits the availability of these technologies, forcing some members to be more dependent on the grid than others. Furthermore, not every home is fit for use with solar, wind, or batteries. Some DERs like rooftop solar and wind are inefficient for many homes located in wooded environments. Others are unable to due to insufficient land on the property or insufficient roof real estate.
Works Cited
Ngueko, Didier. “Optimizing decentralized energy: a comprehensive review of distributed energy resource modeling.” SpringerNature, 05 September 2025, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s43067-025-00265-2. Accessed 31 January 2026.
Quadisat, Muneer. “Future-proofing energy infrastructure resilience with distributed energy resources.” ScienceDirect, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666165925000961. Accessed 30 January 2026.
Richmond, Kyle, and Zachary Greene. “US Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), Explained.” World Resources Institute, 30 September 2022, https://www.wri.org/insights/distributed-energy-resources-explained-us. Accessed 2 February 2026.
Ruggles, Tyler H. “Planning reliable wind- and solar-based electricity systems.” ScienceDirect, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666792424000234. Accessed 31 January 2026.
“Small-scale power generators critical for a resilient energy grid.” Technology for a sustainable climate, IEEE, https://sustainable-climate.ieee.org/news/resilient-energy-grid/. Accessed 31 January 2026.
