PXiSE Energy Solutions unveils DER (distributed energy resources) management and communication platform. This will simplify utilities’ ability to monitor and manage customer DERs such as solar PV (photovoltaic) and battery storage.
“Before now, utilities have been reluctant to open the floodgates on customer distributed energy resources like solar PV and battery storage because they were unable to monitor when or how much power they’re contributing to the grid. This tool, which works securely over the internet, gives them the visibility and management they need.” says Tim Allen, PXiSE president and CEO.
PXiSE took advantage of Microsoft Azure application services to speed development and deployment of platform and accelerate time to market. Azure Application Insights enable thorough testing and offer a layer of security which is important to utility customers, however auto-scaling allows product to grow along with the customers’ needs. “By taking advantage of Microsoft Cloud, PXiSE’s platform positions utility users to easily scale as more DERs are added to their grids,” says Bilal Khursheed, Microsoft worldwide power and utilities leader.
With number of customer-owned DERs ever rising, utilities are increasingly faced with tough choices, including denying customers’ ability to add solar PV or storage because of risk to grid’s stability. The electrical grid was originally designed as a one-way conduit for electricity to run from a utility’s generating station to a customer. Transmission wires were designed for a maximum capacity determined by utility. As consumers add additional capacity by generating their own power, this maximum capacity could be exceeded and damages grid, causing power fluctuations and outages.
These constraints are what led PXiSE customer WEL Networks to pilot DER Management and Communication Platform. “This platform is a potential game-changer for us. We’re looking at using more precise data about how, when, and where customer DERs are impacting our power network to better manage our infrastructure, and can manage customer resources within our current network constraints.” says Gary Carleton, senior DSO project engineer at WEL Networks.
In the past, utilities had no way to measure and monitor how much additional power customer DERs were adding to the grid. As a precautionary measure, they had to limit connections to prevent overload until the capacity of transmission wires could be expanded. The PXiSE DER management and communication platform provides utilities with visibility they need as to where, when and how much customer DERs are impacting the grid.
Through its user-friendly interface, PXiSE platform enables utilities to register, monitor, and organise customer DERs and schedule their dispatch. With this level of visibility and management, utilities can add increasing numbers of customer-owned renewables to grid and are better informed about how much generation to add from utility-owned assets to maintain a balanced grid. The platform enables network modeling as well as future planning and optimisation of entire grid.
The cloud-native platform uses IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) 2030.5 standard protocol to communicate to customer devices over internet. 2030.5 was purpose-built as a future-proof internet of things (IoT) protocol with applicability to a range of consumer devices and inverters and was adopted by California’s Public Utility Commission as default communications protocol for linking DERs with power grid operations in June 2016.
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