Imagine you're at a dinner party, and someone asks about your job. You explain that you help manage the electric grid. They probably picture large coal plants, spinning turbines, and towering metal structures across the landscape. That's the grid most of us have known for a century. It's a top-down, one-way system where power begins at a big plant and ends up in a toaster.

But if you attended the DTECH conference in San Diego this week, you know that the world is changing. The focus of the conversation wasn't on building more "muscle"—meaning large power plants. It was about developing "brains." We're talking about Virtual Power Plants, or VPPs.