The Grid’s Tech Future Is Already Being Written in Vermont

Earlier this week some colleagues and I had the distinct pleasure of joining one of our customers, Vermont Electric Cooperative (VEC), for their Board Education Day. We were invited by Cyril Brunner, one of the energy sector’s leading minds, whose work at VEC is helping shape how cooperatives approach the future grid. VEC hosts these sessions to help board members dig into the big challenges ahead.

One session, led by UVM professor Mads Almassalkhi, stood out. He framed Vermont not as an isolated case, but as a preview of the future—where the Green Mountains set the scene for a grid that is small in scale, rich in renewables, and challenging to coordinate.

#Tomorrow’s grid isn’t hypothetical anymore

Mads described Vermont as an “energy innovation workbench.” The issues showing up in VEC’s service territory are the same structural challenges that will confront energy retailers balancing portfolios, OEMs shipping millions of devices, aggregators building VPPs, and ISOs managing market operations:

• More generation than load – At VEC's spring-time peak its territory has over 200 MW of renewable generation but only ~50 MW of load. The imbalance raises hard coordination questions.
• DERs at scale – Flexible resources like EVs, HVACs, batteries, and solar are multiplying quickly, and will define the future grid’s character.
• Flexibility as the new reliability – The grid’s performance and affordability will increasingly depend on how well flexible assets are orchestrated.
• Coordination is the missing piece – The core challenge isn’t just having flexible resources, but figuring out who coordinates across utilities, VPPs/DERMS, OEMs, markets, and customers.

#The grid’s challenges are outpacing its software

What struck me most listening to Mads was the gap between these emerging challenges and the technology the energy industry relies on today. Whether you’re a co-op like VEC, a national retailer, or an OEM shipping devices, the same pattern emerges: we’re trying to solve next-decade problems with last-decade tools.

• Centralized control is obsolete – Assets and data live with dozens of actors. Without shared infrastructure, coordination collapses into blind spots and finger-pointing.
• Batch thinking is dead – Day-ahead schedules and blunt rebates don’t matter when thousands of devices must flex in seconds.
• The data doesn’t line up – DER APIs can be sub-second, SCADA ticks every few seconds, and AMI lags at 15–60 minutes. Each system sees a different slice of reality. Without normalization and alignment, operators are left with a fragmented picture of the grid.
• Customers won’t be treated as load – It’s astonishing how many systems still treat customer devices as levers to be pulled—hiding logic, seizing control, and offering no visibility. That status quo is untenable. Without transparency and agency, trust evaporates and participation collapses.
• Enterprise UX is broken – It’s 2025, and many critical energy systems still look and feel like 1990s desktop software. No mobile access, clunky interfaces, and workflows built for billing rather than operations. Users deserve modern, intuitive tools—but too often they’re stuck with dated ones.
• Security patched on is security failed – Millions of connected devices can’t be protected by bolt-on firewalls. One breach cascades.
• Walled gardens will collapse – Proprietary silos and custom one-offs can’t survive the speed and scale of DER growth.
• Humans can’t click their way out – Manual dispatch and spreadsheets fail when millions of assets need to coordinate in real time.

#What we built Texture to do

Texture works with customers across the energy landscape—including co-ops like VEC—to close these gaps. We don’t sell energy products or compete with operators. Our role is to provide the connective tissue—the foundation that enables coordination across segments. The platform was designed with the whole industry in mind:

• Shared but not owned – No single entity will ever control everything. Texture is unopinionated infrastructure: built to connect, not to take over.
• Real time or nothing – Every data change is an event. Our streaming architecture keeps orchestration continuous and in sync with live conditions.
• One grid, one view – We fuse messy, multi-speed data streams into a coherent, high-resolution layer any operator can trust.
• Customers in the loop – Programs stay transparent. Device behavior is visible and adjustable in real time, not dictated from a black box.
• Enterprise UX that meets modern expectations – Texture delivers clean, consistent interfaces—desktop and mobile—so operators, partners, and customers can see and act in real time. We treat enterprise users as first-class users, not afterthoughts.
• Security by design – Permissions, encryption, and audit trails are embedded in every data object and workflow. Trust is foundational.
• Interoperable to the core – Open APIs and shared models connect legacy systems with new platforms. No rip-and-replace. No lock-in.
• Automation without abdication – Workflows and AI agents handle orchestration continuously, while humans stay in the loop for exceptions—not micromanagement.

#The hardest problems are here—and they’re solvable

Vermont is just the proving ground. Every player in energy—utilities, co-ops, retailers, OEMs, aggregators, ISOs—will soon face the same pressures: more distributed assets, more fragmented data, more demand for real-time coordination. The conclusion is inescapable. Tomorrow’s grid won’t be run with yesterday’s technology. It needs new infrastructure. That’s what we’re building at Texture—alongside customers like VEC.