RTI International expands North Carolina testbed for grid-edge innovation

Oct 17, 2025 09:48 AM ET
  • RTI International will enlarge its plug-and-play energy pilot facility in Research Triangle Park, creating a sandbox for grid-edge technologies and standards.

RTI International is expanding its plug-and-play energy technologies demonstration lab at Research Triangle Park, aiming to speed the path from promising prototype to field-ready product. The facility functions as a neutral sandbox where startups, utilities, and equipment makers can validate interoperability, cybersecurity, and performance—without risking live feeders or customer outages.

Why it matters: grid-edge tech is proliferating—smart inverters, home batteries, EV chargers, building controls—but many products still struggle to talk to each other and to utility systems. RTI’s testbed recreates realistic operating conditions with controllable loads, rooftop-PV simulators, distribution protection equipment, and market gateways. Vendors can test IEEE 1547 functions, communications via OpenADR and IEEE 2030.5, and grid-forming modes that are moving from niche to necessity as inverter-based resources scale.

The expansion will add more bays, higher-power hardware-in-the-loop capability, and cyber ranges to probe device resilience against common exploits. Just as important, the institute plans to grow its reference data sets—standardized scenarios and acceptance metrics—so utilities can compare apples to apples when evaluating pilots. For early-stage companies, a pass through RTI’s regime can shave months off utility approvals and unlock first-of-a-kind deployments.

North Carolina is a logical setting. The state’s mix of research institutions, manufacturing, and progressive utilities has made it a hub for grid modernization. The lab’s proximity to suppliers and system operators cuts friction for iterative testing, while federal and state grants often co-fund pre-commercial validation.

Success won’t hinge on shiny hardware alone. The value is in proving end-to-end workflows: device enrollment, secure firmware updates, telemetry integrity, and safe fallback modes during communications loss. With more distributed assets coming online—EVs especially—those “boring” pathways are what keep a modern grid stable.

If RTI meets its targets, the upgraded facility will help translate innovation into deployment—de-risking technologies that make distributed energy predictable, dispatchable, and easy for operators to manage.