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At the Factor This Studio at DTECH 2025, Ali Ipakchi, Executive Vice President, Technical & Strategic Directions & Chief Visionary Officer, OATI, sat down with John Engel to discuss where OATI sits in the energy transition, OATI’s Enterprise to Edge concept, and how the modern grid is evolving.
“Nowadays, a lot of the changes happening in the industry are consumer-led, and technology-driven,” Ipakchi said. “And with those changes, the impact is spanning from the utility enterprise and bulk power system operation all the way down to the edge of the grid, where the consumers are, and where a lot of the technology is being deployed.”
With so many grid edge technologies coming online from the customer side, utilities have needed to adjust their operations, build bridges between traditional silos, and go through some “serious change management” to make the connections happen, Ipakchi added.
Virtual power plants can help build the bridges between consumers, grid operations, and the compensation that comes back to consumers at the end of the day, Ipakchi argues.
“The fact that there is a significant amount of flexibility on the edge of the grid at the customer side, especially with the emergence of electrification of transportation EVs, deployment of distributed energy resources, and the level of automation that is happening with buildings and industries and connectivity of capabilities, energy consuming assets will be able to be remotely controlled,” Ipakchi said. “So the aggregation of those creates a significant amount of capabilities that can support the bulk power operation.”
