DERs - Distributed Energy Resources

It's funny how times have changed. In the beginning, it is hardware that had the impact on energy systems. Nowadays, because software moves and evolves so fast, it is almost as though it is the only thing that is fast enough to keep up with the changing demands of energy.

One thing that this article keeps talking about is Distributed Energy Resources - or DERs. What are these? I would like to understand. But unfortunately for the moment I am trying to answer 10000 software engineering questions as well at work.

Ah, I see - these are "smaller generation units that are located on the customers side of the meter." Home energy generation stuff. Got it. And storage. (Australian government source website).

So it is clear to me from the article that software engineering is playing a huge role in the technologies which are being built to manage this.

This article talks about the "networks they create with the grid". But I don't get it. Why is this important? And why is software needed to manage this? Why, why, why?

It talks about software to manage these connections - does that mean users tracking their generation and consumption? Or is it grids calculating how much excess energy is sold to them by home producers and using software to aggregate and analyse this data?

p.s. as always, I am citing this article - at least for now.