Three questions every utility should ask before deploying technology

Utilities today now face a paradox of choice.

Years ago, a book was published that challenged a deeply held belief of both consumer brands and the customers they serve. The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less argued that near limitless choices in the products we all buy at stores and ecommerce websites made people more anxious, less happy, and more reluctant to make any decisions at all. Instead of feeling empowered by a bounty of options, the book concluded that fewer choices could elevate the confidence people feel in making purchase decisions.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the world added 108 gigawatts of battery energy storage in 2025, an increase of about 40% compared to 2024. Though it grabs headlines for scaling so rapidly, battery energy storage is by no means the only technology utilities are considering.

Today, utilities now have a broader range of options than ever before to address reliability and resilience challenges. From grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) that increase the utilization of existing transmission assets, to synchronous condensers, grid-forming batteries, advanced power electronics, and increasingly sophisticated digital monitoring and control systems, the industry has developed a deep and expanding toolkit for supporting grid performance. A wider selection of technologies may seem like an unalloyed good. 

But, utilities now face a paradox of choice. The industry has more technologies available to support reliability, resilience, and flexibility than ever before. 

Yet as the number of options grows, determining which solution will provide the greatest value for a particular system challenge becomes increasingly complex.The challenge is no longer simply finding a technology that could address a given problem. Now, it’s understanding precisely what problem needs to be solved, where in the system it is emerging, and which intervention will provide the greatest value given the full range of forces and interactions at play. Put differently, utilities today have a decision problem, not a technology problem. And the analytical frameworks most utilities rely on to make those decisions were not built for the grid that is rapidly evolving.

“This is not about finding the technology,” said Gagan Porwal, Global Head of Operations, Strategy, and Software for GE Vernova’s Consulting Services. “It is more about how to make a system-level decision that drives the right level of resiliency and reliability.”

Three questions every utility should be asking

Before any decision about which technology best enhances grid resilience, we must be crystal clear about the specific risks emerging and where they are located. 

Exacerbating the problem is the fact that industry-wide, we do not have a standardized framework capable of producing confident decisions at the speed necessary today. “There is a lack of a standard or a defined framework and process that can help make decisions faster and execute procurement decisions in a manner that keeps up with the rate of change on the grid, large load profiles, and the requirements the system has from a resiliency perspective,” Porwal said.

Solving that decision problem starts by answering three questions.  

Question 1: Where are my emerging flexibility and stability hotspots? 

It seems like an obvious observation, but it bears repetition: utilities cannot solve problems they can’t see. Traditional planning frameworks were built for a grid that behaved predictably, including dispatchable generation and evenly distributed load growth. In that environment, planners could develop a reasonable view of future system conditions and assess whether the grid would continue to perform reliably. When the range of possible outcomes was relatively narrow, those approaches were highly effective at identifying where investments were needed. 

That grid no longer exists. Load growth is emerging rapidly and unevenly. For example, a relatively small number of utility service territories and regional transmission organizations, particularly ERCOT and PJM, are experiencing double-digit load growth, while many others see only modest increases. At the same time, inverter-based resources (IBRs) change power flows throughout the system that deterministic models struggle to capture, making it difficult to pinpoint where resilience challenges will emerge. Extreme weather events are creating new operating challenges. Instead of planning for a single expected future, utilities increasingly need to prepare for multiple plausible futures, each with different implications for reliability, flexibility, and stability. This is driving a greater need for stochastic planning approaches, which evaluate a range of potential outcomes and uncertainties rather than relying on a single forecast of future conditions. 

Visibility is a non-negotiable precursor to any technology deployment. A utility considering where to put energy storage must first have granular, network-level analysis to see where congestion is a problem, where voltage support is needed, and how storage will interact with existing grid assets. Without that visibility, technology investments are at risk and may, in fact, create more problems than they solve.

Question 2: What type of flexibility does my system actually need? 

Knowing where risks to grid reliability are developing is an important first step. The second is understanding what kind of intervention best addresses them. This is where a technology-first decision framework creates unintended problems. A utility with a preferred technology solution for reliability challenges isn’t answering the fundamental 

question: What specific flexibility does the grid need at a precise location, given the other assets operating around it and current and future conditions?

Clarity about the flexibility needs across the grid is vital because flexibility needs are not interchangeable. For example, capacity flexibility can meet peak demand as load grows and generation portfolios evolve. Operational flexibility manages the variability introduced by wind and solar on a minute-to-minute and hour-to-hour basis. Voltage and reactive power support addresses stability challenges associated with an influx of IBRs. Each of these needs requires a different solution, and deploying the wrong one wastes money without fully solving the problem.

Battery energy storage is versatile and can address ramping needs, contribute to capacity adequacy, and provide voltage support. The purpose it serves depends largely on where it’s installed on the grid. Utilities can cost-effectively provide the flexibility the grid needs to be reliable only when they clearly diagnose the problems and choose the technology best suited to solving them.

“Instead of taking a technology-first approach, the question always has to be: what am I trying to solve for, where am I trying to solve it, and how quickly do I need to solve for it?” Porwal said. “If I know those things, then I know the most optimal combination of technology, tools, and processes I need to deliver that.”

Question 3: Which solutions solve the problem and create the greatest value?

Every investment decision is ultimately a choice about how to allocate limited capital. Investment in technology solutions that don’t fully solve a reliability problem means capital won’t be available elsewhere. With load growth shortening decision timelines and interconnection queues growing, there is pressure to move fast. But speedy decisions made without visibility and analytical rigor underperform in the real world, even if they look perfect in isolation.

A comprehensive evaluation of solutions requires comparing technologies, quantifying technical and economic tradeoffs, and stress-testing results against a wide range of future scenarios. A storage deployment that performs well under one set of assumptions may look very different under another. A transmission upgrade that appears cost-prohibitive in isolation may provide significant value when its reliability benefits are fully quantified. 

Embracing this approach leads to good investment decisions. It also means decisions are defensible to the increasing scrutiny regulators, policymakers, and ratepayers are applying to investment proposals.

Moving away from a technology-first decision-making framework to a more rigorous, system-level approach is a necessity given the speed, scale, and complexity of the challenges posed to grid reliability and resilience. GE Vernova’s Consulting Services helps utilities make that shift by identifying where flexibility and stability risks are emerging and pinpointing the best technology strategy to address them.

"Our job at the end of the day is to de-risk decisions," Porwal said. "This is where we do the deep analytical work to produce an evidence-based recommendation: this is what you need to do to keep your system intact."

It is by no means a bad thing that the industry has an abundance of technology choices to enhance grid reliability and flexibility. But like the dilemma described in The Paradox of Choice, a multitude of options inevitably leads to questions about which investments are best. Those questions are best answered with clarity and visibility about the grid benefits those investments can achieve.