Utility companies face a constant challenge: managing electricity distribution across a dynamic topology. Network topology is constantly being updated for a variety of reasons, including planned maintenance, unplanned outages, development, and load balancing. Organizational subsets of network resources may also be subject to frequent changes.

Demand response (DR) and virtual power plant (VPP) programs can fill the power gaps that these topology changes cause, but traditional programs respond to service territory level strain—calling on every enrolled customer across the entire system when help is needed.  Yet electrical constraints are often highly localized, benefiting from a more targeted response.

As a part of Uplight’s Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) solution—which helps utilities orchestrate and optimize DERs like solar panels, batteries, and smart thermostats to support grid reliability—we offer Dynamic Grouping to automatically organize DERs based on their precise location in the electrical grid.

Unlike static lists that require manual updates, this system can use APIs, a user interface, or CSV uploads to adjust groupings in just minutes. Changes to network resource attributes (including network topology) received through any system interface are processed and stored immediately, with groups and group membership being updated within seconds or minutes to reflect the updates.

The key advantages of this grouping system are speed and precision, enabling utilities to:

• Respond quickly to network reconfigurations, whether planned or emergency situations
• Address localized grid strain without impacting customers elsewhere
• Potentially delay expensive infrastructure upgrades by managing highly strained substations more effectively

As utility grids become more complex with increasing DER penetration, the ability to automatically maintain accurate groupings at scale—potentially across thousands of feeders and hundreds of thousands of service points—becomes essential for effective grid management. Whether managing routine maintenance windows or responding to emergency grid conditions, Dynamic Grouping gives utilities the granular control they need to operate modern grids reliably.