New platform enables utilities to aggregate and dispatch flexible capacity at the feeder and substation level while shifting performance risk through a Capacity-as-a-Service model.
BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, Washington, September 2026 — FlexEnergi, a grid-edge technology, demand response and virtual power plant services company, today announced that its next-generation Edge Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) named Ora™ has been adopted by utility partners and is now operating in the field.
Built from the ground up, FlexEnergi’s platform gives utilities greater precision in managing flexible load at the feeder- and substation-level. The platform enables targeted congestion relief, load shaping and load building, and dispatchable capacity across residential, small and medium business (SMB), agricultural, and large commercial customer segments.
FlexEnergi combines its Ora™ DERMS technology with a performance-based Capacity-as-a-Service (CaaS) offering in which the company is compensated based on delivered capacity performance. Utilities can procure flexible capacity in defined MW blocks, providing an alternative approach to meeting grid needs with flexible, behind-the-meter resources. The platform is delivered through a unified set of managed applications for utility operators, program managers, and participating residential, commercial, and agricultural customers.
Moving Beyond Event-Based Demand Response
Traditional demand response platforms have often focused on periodic events designed to reduce system-wide peak demand. As expanded electrification, distributed energy resources, large loads, and extreme weather create increasingly localized grid challenges, utilities need great flexibility in where and how they manage demand.
FlexEnergi’s Ora™ Edge DERMS is designed to provide continuous, locational optimization across the distribution grid. The platform can orchestrate flexible behind-the-meter assets across homes, apartments, commercial buildings and facilities, agricultural operations, batteries, and electric vehicles based on grid conditions and operational requirements.
This capability supports both traditional grid reliability needs and emerging challenges associated with electrification, renewable generation, and large new loads.
Through its managed Capacity-as-a-Service model, FlexEnergi also assumes responsibility for key elements of program delivery, including program design, customer recruitment, settlements, participant support, and payments. The model is intended to shift a portion of the financial and operational risk of developing flexible capacity away from utilities.
The platform also supports data centers and other large loads pursuing Bring Your Own Capacity (BYOC) arrangements with their local utility, potentially helping address capacity constraints associated with new interconnection requests.
“Our Ora™ Edge DERMS platform gives grid operators the ability to manage flexible capacity where it matters most on the distribution system,” said Farshid Arman, President of FlexEnergi. “Whether the grid needs load reduced, increased, or shifted, utilities can continuously dispatch behind-the-meter resources in response to real-time grid and or market conditions. This is an important step toward a more flexible and responsive grid.”
Key Capabilities
- Cross-segment participation: The platform supports enrolling and orchestrating residential, small businesses, large commercial, and agricultural customers within a single, unified dispatch architecture.
- Locational congestion relief: Operators can dispatch flexible capacity to relieve congestion and extend equipment life on specific feeders, transformers, or substations, rather than only at the system level with bulk dispatch.
- Flexible dispatch logic: Dispatch can be triggered by wholesale price signals, weather events, or directly by a utility’s SCADA or ADMS due to grid constraints, allowing the platform to operate within existing utility operations and market structures.
- Managed EV and Battery charging: The platform actively shifts and shapes electric vehicle charging load as well as batteries, turning a fast-growing source of demand into a flexible, dispatchable resource for the grid.
- Load build for grid balancing: The platform can rapidly build load to compensate for sudden drops in demand, such as large fluctuations from data center loads, and to absorb surplus output from wind and solar generation, helping minimize or eliminate renewable curtailment while maintaining grid balance in real time.
- Capacity-as-a-Service: FlexEnergi only gets paid for actual orchestrated and delivered capacity and offers full turn-key program management, including design, customer recruitment, settlements, support, and payments, shifting the financial and technical risk of managing loads away from utilities. The managed service minimizes complexities around procuring, maintaining, and managing an additional software platform in the ever-increasing plethora of software for real-time operations.
- Bring Your Own Capacity for data centers: Data center operators and developers can work with their local utility to use FlexEnergi’s Ora™ platform and services under Bring Your Own Capacity (BYOC) arrangements, helping accelerate interconnection requests.
- Keeping electric rates low: For utilities that buy energy from the market or with PPAs, such as cooperatives, retail energy marketers, CCA’s, and public utility districts, FlexEnergi lowers your demand & transmission charges, in addition to extending the lifetime of substation equipment and service transformers.
About FlexEnergi
FlexEnergi, a subsidiary of Accurant Energy Holdings, is a grid-edge technology, demand response and Virtual Power Plant services company based in Bainbridge Island, Washington. The company delivers dispatchable capacity from behind-the-meter assets across residential, commercial, industrial, and agricultural customer segments.
FlexEnergi’s Ora™ Edge DERMS platform supports feeder- and substation-level dispatch, continuous load orchestration, and renewable integration through a performance-based Capacity-as-a-Service model.
FlexEnergi is led by a team of industry veterans with experience in demand response, distributed energy resources, utilities, and real-time grid operations technology.
For more information, visit www.flexenergi.com.
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