The Community-Integrated Distributed Energy Resilience (CIDER) project helped rural electric cooperatives use behind-the-meter distributed energy resources (DERs) to lower costs, strengthen resilience, and improve outage response. Led by NRECA Research with Camus Energy and Emulate Energy, the project addressed barriers that have kept smaller co-ops from adopting DER management systems (DERMS), including implementation cost, fragmented device interfaces, limited staff capacity, and the need for grid-aware controls.
CIDER developed and tested an affordable, scalable toolchain that combines a grid-aware operations platform, device aggregation and dispatch, and open-source planning and resilience models. The work integrated utility data and consumer devices, enabled feeder-level visibility and control, and gave co-ops practical ways to evaluate restoration strategies, community outage impacts, DER program economics, and member benefits. The project also translated lessons from literature, workshops, and cooperative experience into guidance for designing resilience programs around local priorities and visible consumer-member value.
The following final reports document the project's software, cooperative results, and community-resilience guidance.
CIDER DERMS Planning Results with Cooperatives
Presents planning model runs and lessons from Tipmont Electric Cooperative, Kenergy Corporation, and Flathead Electric Cooperative. Results show how restoration controls can support critical loads and distribute load shedding, how technology and tariff choices change benefits for utilities and members, and how community-impact metrics can be tailored to local priorities.
CIDER DERMS Software Final Report
Documents the grid-aware Camus platform, Emulate's utility demand response portal and device integrations, and the ReNORM software suite. Delivered capabilities include unified GIS, AMI, and DER data; feeder connectivity and loading and voltage analytics; flexible DER scheduling and dispatch; device monitoring; measurement and verification; and tools for restoration, community impact, and DER program economics.
CIDER DERMS Community Resilience Event Response
Provides practical guidance for co-ops designing resilience initiatives that strengthen consumer-member engagement. It covers outage communication, metric and data selection, program design, behind-the-meter DER deployment, communications infrastructure, a cooperative case study, and a detailed resilience-metrics appendix.
CIDER DERMS Demonstration Metrics – Coming in January 2027
The CIDER software is currently deployed and active at Trinity Valley Electric Coop and Flathead Electric cooperative for the coordination and control of HVAC and in-home battery energy storage. The project team is collecting metrics on device performance, financial performance of the program, and consumer feedback. These results will be available in early 2027.
Point of Contact
Questions about the CIDER software, final reports, or how these approaches could apply at your co-op? Contact: David.Pinney@NRECA.coop.
