13 He called this increasing adoption of onfarm DERs (distributed energy resources) a pivotal moment for agriculture to be a key part of the solution to increase capacity for utilities. Yield Edge is built to harness that moment, according to Nuss. The platform aggregates on-farm distributed energy resources—primarily irrigation pumps today, but increasingly cold storage, EV chargers, solar, batteries, and generators—and turns them into a unified, dispatchable grid asset. “Yes, we aggregate on-farm DERs into various utility programs that operate as a unified dispatchable grid asset,” Nuss said to this magazine. “Enrolled DERs will respond to grid needs based on the program through our DERMS platform.” A DERMS Built for the Agricultural Industry, Not Adapted to It While DERMS platforms have proliferated in residential and commercial sectors, agriculture has remained underserved. Nuss realized that the gap was glaring. “Most DERMS platforms are focused on residential, commercial, and industrial. While some aggregators dabble in agriculture, Yield was built to support farmers,” related Nuss. That agricultural focus has paid off: the company has averaged 100 percent performance in demandresponse dispatches over the past five years. The reason, noted Nuss, is that agriculture requires a fundamentally different approach. Farms operate on biological schedules, not business hours. Irrigation cycles, crop needs, and regional climates all shape energy use. Yield Edge was architected around those realities. “Over the past 10 years, we have developed our own proprietary pump automation,” he said. That hands-on experience taught the team how hardware behaves in the field and how to build reliable cloud-connected control systems. Today, the platform is hardware-agnostic, integrating directly with leading irrigation automation companies through a growing partner ecosystem. Turning Already Exisiting Equipment Into GridReady Capacity Yield Energy’s model is simple: utilities need flexible capacity, and farms have large, controllable loads that can deliver it—if the right technology exists to coordinate them. Yield Edge provides that coordination. “Yield’s Edge DERMS platform is a demand flexibility technology solution for utilities looking to increase their capacity quickly and cost-effectively,” Nuss related. The company designs and implements flexibility programs for utilities, then recruits growers to participate. Depending on the program, farmers earn either capacity-based revenue or bill savings through dynamic rates. The value proposition for growers is straightforward: no new equipment, no cost to enroll, and no disruption to operations.
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