Planned Communities (PCs) present a unique opportunity for deployment of intelligent control of demand-side distributed energy resources (DER) and storage, which may be organized in Microgrids (MGs). MGs require balancing for maintaining safe and resilient operation. This paper discusses the implications of using MG concepts for planning and control of energy systems within PCs. A novel tool is presented, based on decision trees (DTs), with two potential applications: (i) planning of energy storage systems within such MGs and (ii) controlling energy resources for energy balancing within a PC MG. The energy storage planning and energy balancing methodology is validated through sensitivity case studies, demonstrating its effectiveness. A test implementation is presented, utilizing distributed controller hardware to execute the energy balancing algorithm in real-time. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.