This course translates the lessons from How We Got Here: A (Riveting!) History of DER Interconnection into business practices for those in the solar and storage industry. It’s designed for the people steering the organizational strategy and processes: the executives, VPs, and senior managers, whose decisions determine whether a company proactively manages the interconnection process as a critical business function or reactively addresses growing challenges when they arise.

This course takes the big lessons from two decades of interconnection evolution and translates them into strategic insights for leaders making real business decisions today. There are ways to minimize the business risks of interconnection on project timelines, customer eligibility for expiring incentives, business operations, and your organizational reputation.

Whether you are currently experiencing interconnection challenges or seeing things currently running smoothly, you’ll learn to identify key interconnection provisions that are critical to your business operations, to future‑proof operations as the grid becomes more constrained, and to evaluate whether your interconnection challenges stem from internal processes, utility bottlenecks, or the regulatory frameworks themselves.  

Instead of burying you in jargon, we’ll anchor every concept in real-world stories of projects that hit constraints early, companies that discovered (sometimes the hard way) the cost of overlooking interconnection, and leaders who built smarter strategies by understanding the rules of the game.

This isn’t a course about becoming an interconnection engineer. It’s a course about becoming an executive who understands why interconnection belongs at the strategy table in your business operations.

Your instructor, Vaughan Woodruff, brings his experience as a founder of a Best for the World solar company, a policy advocate, an interconnection strategist for a multi-state developer, and the former leader of the nation’s top interconnection reform initiative. His stories illustrate how interconnection policy isn’t a technical sidebar, but  instead a strategic fulcrum for every company seeking to interconnect solar and storage to the grid.

If you’re leading a solar or storage business in the U.S., and you’re ready to integrate interconnection awareness into the DNA of your company’s strategy, this course is your map, your decoder ring, and occasionally, your cautionary tale.