Utilities Are Warming to DERs. Thank Data Centers.

For years, utilities and the distributed energy industry fought bitter battles over net metering, revenue erosion, and who controls the grid. Now, something has shifted. In this episode of the Energy Changemakers Podcast, host Elisa Wood sits down with Marco Krapels, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer at Enphase Energy, to explore a striking reversal: utilities that once viewed rooftop solar as a threat are now actively seeking out DER companies as partners.

The catalyst? Data centers. The explosive growth of AI and digital infrastructure is driving electricity demand at a scale that centralized generation simply cannot meet fast enough — and utilities are starting to realize that 80 million untapped American rooftops may be part of the answer.

Krapels brings both battle scars and optimism to this conversation. A former investment banker turned clean energy executive, he helped build SolarCity into the country's largest solar company and fought landmark net-metering wars in Nevada. Now, from Enphase — which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year — he describes a world where bundled, flexible distributed energy resources (solar + battery + bidirectional EV charger + smart home management) form dispatchable virtual power plants that utilities can actually rely on. And he argues it's not a future scenario. It's already happening.