The people of Maryland want to take advantage of home-generating resources, like household solar with storage systems and EV batteries, to produce their own electricity and even sell excess energy back to the grid in times of need.

Unfortunately, grid infrastructure and antiquated regulations have been unfairly restricting Marylanders, preventing them from leveraging technology innovations to better their lives and save money.

Advanced Energy United pulled together a coalition of Maryland energy advocates and a wide range of advanced energy businesses representing different technologies and revenue models to come up with legislation that would better empower consumers and expand the market for the industry.

Maryland had already conducted pilot programs in the state to explore how to make broader use of the range of technologies, including ownership structures for energy storage. The legislation would bring together these technologies and use cases into one law that would require a transformation of how Maryland’s distribution grid interacts with homes and businesses.

Companies that build electric vehicles (EVs), provide charging solutions for EVs, install solar + storage systems, build and install distributed energy resources (DERs), and manage networks of DERs like virtual power plants (VPPs), all had a hand in crafting the legislation that would be known as the Distributed Renewable Integration and Vehicle Electrification (DRIVE) Act, sponsored by Delegate David Fraser-Hidalgo of Montgomery County.

The DRIVE Act was a wide-ranging success. Passed and signed into law in 2024, the bill is poised to unlock several industries that are now better able to provide consumers with new ways to engage with the electricity system in Maryland.

At the heart of the DRIVE Act is a provision that creates a first-of-its-kind bidirectional EV charging program aimed at allowing EVs to not only draw power from the grid but also supply electricity back, effectively turning EVs into mobile energy storage units. The law would make Maryland the first state in the nation to require electric utility companies to allow these ‘vehicle-to-grid’ systems to interconnect to the state’s electric distribution network. The law also requires electric utility companies to implement pilot programs that pay the owners of EVs with bidirectional charging for helping to bolster grid reliability, incentivizing the development and deployment of technologies that contribute to grid support and efficiency.

Additionally, the DRIVE Act would allow for the creation of VPPs—networks of small energy-producing or energy storage devices, such as EVs, heat pumps, and solar + storage systems, that can be pooled together to inject power into the grid at peak times—further increasing Maryland’s energy resiliency.

The legislation also expands use of “time of use” (TOU) electric rates, letting Maryland residents charge EVs during off-peak hours (when electricity demand across the grid is less), reducing strain on the grid and lowering costs for customers.

We are empowering lawmakers with the policy solutions needed to improve the capacity and flexibility of the distribution grid by making greater use of advanced energy technologies like DERs, VPPs, and EVs.