Quantum Computing + Distributed Energy: A New Frontier for Grid Optimization

Source: Mark Chidwick | · LINKEDIN · | October 1, 2025

The electricity grid is no longer a one-way highway from centralized plants to end users. With solar, wind, storage, EVs, and microgrids all feeding into the system, the grid has become a complex, distributed ecosystem. Managing it is one of the toughest optimization challenges of our time.

The problem is much more tractable within a limited micro-grid where the object is well managed within a single organization.

However, things get much more complex when we consider the larger grid and the plethora of distributed generators.

Today, grid operators must decide — often in seconds — which generators to run, how to dispatch storage, and how to balance loads across thousands of distributed energy resources (DERs). Classical computers struggle as this becomes a combinatorial explosion of possibilities.