Of the generation and storage capacity that entered interconnection queues over the last two decades, only 13% reached commercial operation by the end of 2025, while 75% had been withdrawn. To address the demands on the grid, our industry needs solutions that can quickly relieve stress on utility capacity.
This makes the flexibility already available on the grid increasingly valuable. Commercial buildings - including offices, schools, and healthcare facilities - account for up to 35% of U.S. energy consumption. Much of that is flexible, creating an opportunity for utilities to relieve local grid pressure and gain more time to respond with new infrastructure.
The challenge is accessing it. Every building is different, facility teams are overwhelmed with maintaining buildings, and relying on operators to manually adjust systems is impossible to scale. Data integration and automation can turn that complexity into a reliable grid resource in just weeks - while delivering operational and financial value to building owners.
Drawing on insights from Jesse Sycuro, Vice President of Operations at McKinstry, and Jesse Rebello, Managing Director of Edo, this article shares six lessons for making commercial demand flexibility work at scale. By combining McKinstry’s 65 years of experience across the facility lifecycle with Edo’s utility-focused technology platform, the two organizations are tackling the complex challenge of turning untapped commercial capacity into a reliable grid resource.
The Problem: Commercial Buildings Are Like Snowflakes
“Commercial buildings are like snowflakes,” says Sycuro. They vary in age and design, and no two buildings use exactly the same systems with the same design. This variability makes their flexibility difficult to unlock at scale. Legacy demand response events relied on highly manual adjustments, making performance unpredictable for utilities while burdening facility teams.
Transforming commercial buildings into a continuous, dispatchable grid resource requires automation. Platforms like Edo connect to existing building management systems, mapping data from each unique building and automating load adjustments, Rebello shares. When you unlock the data, you unlock the potential – and Edo has developed the technology to connect the flexibility of buildings to the needs of the grid. This gives utilities predictable capacity and owners visibility to optimize performance without burdening staff.
The Solution: Six Lessons Learned
#1: Make the Economics Work
Demand flexibility needs to deliver clear financial value for building owners while solving a meaningful problem for utilities. That value varies by market, the flexibility a building can provide, and, importantly, its location. Because commercial buildings are distributed across the grid, utilities can target flexibility where local capacity is most constrained, making it more valuable in some locations than in others. Capacity payments in high-congestion zones, for instance, can be up to five times higher than in areas with less grid strain, says Rebello.
#2: Make Participation Easy
Facility managers are busy, so programs that require significant time, cost, or effort are unlikely to scale. “There’s a perception that enrolling in these programs is time-consuming and expensive,” says Sycuro. In practice, he notes, there is typically no cost and little manual effort required. The goal is to make participation simple, with technology handling the day-to-day work.
#3: Win the Facility Team
For programs to succeed, facility teams need to trust the technology, protect tenant comfort, and retain control, including the ability to opt out. Participation also requires an advocate who understands the systems and can act on what the technology reveals. “Program success comes down to a true partnership with the facilities team,” says Sycuro. “They hold a deep level of institutional knowledge.” The right tools highlight what matters and enable teams to leverage technology’s potential – not only to unlock demand capacity but to also improve the core function of the building in providing safe and comfortable environments for occupants.
#4: Turn Data into Insight
Once building data is centralized, operators can see how buildings are performing and spot problems that might otherwise go unnoticed.
“Managing a building is like going to the doctor,” explains Sycuro. “You start with the basic ‘vitals’, like room temperatures, to see if everything looks healthy on the surface, but the technology that enables demand flexibility gives us access to more granular building data - a deeper diagnostic layer that can reveal what’s really going on inside a building.”
That deeper visibility can uncover hidden inefficiencies and equipment issues. “If you leave the lights on at night, it’s obvious, but if your HVAC system runs all night, nobody sees it and no one is there to know it’s running,” Sycuro says, citing a college campus where data revealed snow-melt gutter heaters running throughout the summer. Leveraging technology to unlock this data and bring it to light helps us to proactively manage systems, remove waste from the building, and create more value for building stakeholders as part of the solution.
#5: Standardize to Scale
Scaling across a portfolio means making different buildings easier to understand and manage. Even similar buildings can operate differently because of their installations, controls, and changes made by facility teams over time.
Platforms like Edo solve this by standardizing the data rather than overhauling building hardware. Normalizing information from disparate management systems provides operators and utilities with a consistent, portfolio-wide view of available flexibility.
#6: Make Insight Actionable
Centralizing building data is only useful if it leads to action. The right technology partner can turn information from multiple buildings into a clear, prioritized view of what needs attention.
“Having an extra set of eyes and a system in place that highlights and identifies opportunities is of high value to building owners,” says Sycuro. It can flag unusual equipment behavior or wasted energy.
The Payoff: A Win-Win for Utilities and Building Owners
Utility Benefits
- Speed of Deployment: Provides capacity without building new infrastructure. Rebello says Edo went from signing a utility contract to a live demand-flex event in less than eight weeks.
- Targeted Locational Capacity: Uses distributed commercial buildings to provide flexibility where local grid constraints are greatest.
- Dependable Load Reduction: Delivers dispatchable flexibility in response to grid needs. “What the utility cares about most is having reliable capacity when they call an event,” says Rebello.
- Permanent Energy Efficiency: Delivers lasting energy savings while helping utilities manage peak demand.
Building Owner Benefits
- Financial Returns: Creates new revenue by optimizing energy use while reducing energy bills.
- Deep Diagnostics: Turns building data into insights that reveal hidden energy waste, equipment issues, and inefficiencies.
- Proactive Capital Planning: Gives visibility into equipment performance, helping owners to prioritize maintenance and investment before costly failures.
- Regulatory Compliance: Provides performance data to identify efficiency improvements and meet building energy standards.
- Centralized Portfolio View: Centralizes data across buildings, giving owners a consistent view of performance.
The opportunity extends beyond emergency events. When buildings operate dynamically with the grid, demand flexibility becomes an everyday asset - providing utilities with dispatchable capacity without new infrastructure while helping owners optimize performance and generate reliable returns.
