Advanced solar inverters could be one of the biggest distributed energy resource (DER) communications and control points out there someday. With California now requiring at least early-stage “smart” capabilities from all new solar projects — and a standards roadmap for next-stage efforts like real-time communications and active controls — this future now has a template. There are still a lot of unanswered questions about how smart inverters will be used. That was the consensus at Intersolar this week, where experts discussed the latest developments on the U.S. smart solar inverter front.