Thursday 15 May 2008

Xcel Energy Selects GridPoint SmartGrid Platform for its SmartGridCity

Xcel Energy have selected the GridPoint SmartGrid Platform™ for its SmartGridCity™ in Boulder, Colo. The platform applies information technology to the electric grid to provide utilities with an intelligent network of distributed energy resources that controls load, stores energy and produces power.

Xcel Energy's advanced, smart grid system – estimated to be a $100 million effort when fully implemented over the next few years – will provide customers with a portfolio of smart grid technologies designed to provide environmental, financial and operational benefits. Xcel Energy's Smart Grid Consortium, bringing together leading technologists, engineering firms, business leaders and IT experts, will provide guidance, products and services needed to bring Xcel Energy's smart grid vision to life. Consortium members include Accenture, Current Group, GridPoint, Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories and Ventyx.

"GridPoint provides an intelligent platform to aggregate and control a variety of energy resources in the home or business," said Michael Carlson, CIO of Xcel Energy. "We'll be able to test and confirm capabilities to meet the individual needs of our customers while also deploying new capabilities for balancing supply and demand in a clean and efficient manner."

The platform's modular, scaleable and upgradeable architecture enables Xcel Energy to deploy proven technologies (e.g. load control devices and advanced batteries) while creating a practical path for integrating new technologies (e.g. plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and fuel cells). Xcel Energy will be evaluating a variety of technology and system capabilities from GridPoint in conjunction with its SmartGridCity™ in Boulder, including, but not limited to:

Advanced Demand Management – Measuring, controlling and verifying select loads (e.g. electric water heaters, pool pumps, home appliances) as well as adjusting thermostats within a few degrees

Supply Management – Providing capacity and energy by discharging power to the electric grid from advanced batteries (including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles) or distributed solar systems during peak periods as well as recharging batteries from solar systems or the electric grid during off peak times


Solar PV Integration – "Plug-n-play" integration and operation of residential and light commercial solar energy systems, paving the way for the commercial success of renewable energy


Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV) Smart Charging – Charging PHEVs during off-peak periods, regardless of when consumers plug in PHEVs, which enables Xcel Energy to offer consumers significantly reduced rates for off-peak charging


Single Interface for Control – GridPoint Control Console, a single Web-based interface located in the utility control room, provides Xcel Energy with the ability to easily control distributed energy resources, thereby providing the equivalent performance of central station generation. The console also provides an interface to Xcel Energy’s enterprise systems including CIS, rates, billing, OMS, etc.

Online Energy Management – GridPoint Customer Portal, a password protected Web portal, enables Xcel Energy’s customers to reduce energy consumption according to their individual preferences. The portal also provides easy to understand environmental data based on an individual customer’s conservation efforts

Instant Backup Power – Providing customers with instant backup power through advanced batteries

Performance Monitoring and Customer Support – GridPoint Operations Center, the intelligent hub of the platform, provides remote performance monitoring of distributed energy resources and alerts GridPoint customer services representatives to preemptively address maintenance needs

"Xcel Energy's vision for the Smart Grid and commitment to implementation demonstrate its leadership in the electric utility industry," said Peter L. Corsell, President and CEO, GridPoint. "We are very excited to be working with such an innovative utility."

To learn more about Xcel Energy’s SmartGridCity™, please see www.xcelenergy.com/smartgrid, which provides educational materials and graphics illustrating Xcel Energy’s Smart Grid vision. .

Friday 9 May 2008

EU money is on smart grids

Intelligent electricity generation and distribution is essential to make the EU's 2020 renewable energy target writes Stephen Gardner of Climate Change Corp. (http://www.climatechangecorp.com/), an independent news website, dedicated to providing high quality news and analysis on climate change to companies around the world.

Europe's energy grids are ripe for renewal.

Like steam railways, they are an infrastructure from another age. They are creakingly inefficient, hopelessly wasteful and liable to break down, as they did in London in August 2003, when an early evening blackout trapped people in lifts, halted transport systems and shut down 60 percent of the London Underground.

The grids are also ill-equipped to deal with the environmental and energy challenges facing the world, chiefly climate change and security of supply. In fact, on both counts, the present energy infrastructure is part of the problem. Power generation is one of the main causes of greenhouse gas emissions, while the current supply model of a few generating plants supplying electricity to wide areas is vulnerable.

This was shown when North America suffered – like London, in August 2003 – its worst ever blackout. The cause was a single Ohio power plant failing because of a demand surge, causing a cascade effect resulting in the shutdown of more than 100 power plants. It seemed to prove the words of Bill Richardson, United States energy secretary under Bill Clinton, who called his country a "superpower with a third world electricity grid".

Fortunately there is a vision for a cleaner, leaner energy future. A European Union-backed research consortium known as SmartGrids has published a blueprint for a power system that will be "highly reliable, flexible, accessible and cost effective." Smart grids, says the consortium’s Pau Rey, are “a concept that involves adding intelligence to the electricity networks".

Power to the people

The key element of a smart grid is that, unlike a dumb one, it will be able to take power from multiple sources and distribute it according to demand so that optimum efficiency is achieved. There will be less reliance on massive power plants. Energy will be generated locally and fed into ‘intelligrids’ organised at municipal level, with surpluses being sold to other areas, according to demand.

Renewables will provide a far greater share of power than today. A farmer might have a wind turbine on his or her land, or a generator producing power from flowing water. Households might have mini wind generators on the roof. The goal, as Spencer Abraham, another former US energy secretary, recently said, is "a two-way electricity grid where homes or businesses can sell their surplus power back to the grid".

Sophisticated software that accurately measures demand will monitor the network. Homes and offices will have meters that respond to peaks and troughs. The future grid has been compared to an 'energy internet' with 'user-generated' electricity feeding into it from every direction. US economist Jeremy Rifkin has christened the future power infrastructure the "intergrid". Management of it, he has said, will be "the next IT revolution."

Highly charged

However, getting from the energy inefficient present to the energy-optimised future will be a major challenge. To begin with, it will be expensive, costing, according to the International Energy Agency, 750 billion euros over the next three decades.

Massive infrastructure work is needed to adapt grids so they can accommodate distributed, rather than centralised, power generation. The EU has seven million kilometres of cable, and four million transformers, says Hans de Keulenaer, manager of Leonardo Energy, a platform for sharing information about advances in electrical power. Grids are organised across wide areas and are supplied by centralised power plants, compared to the decentralised smart grid vision. "That is not going to change overnight," de Keulenaer says.

A major overhaul is also needed to interconnect Europe's national grids. Notwithstanding the creation of a European single market, power generation remains largely a national concern. Less than five percent of electricity is traded across borders, de Keulenaer estimates.

Interconnecting European grids will increase the potential for use of renewable power. Spain, for example, may be able to produce more solar power than it can consume, and can send the excess to the chilly north. At present, interconnection limitations mean this is not possible.

Role for renewables

Greenpeace estimates that renewable power can meet a perhaps surprising 50 percent of the world’s energy needs by 2050. Smart grids and interconnection have "a huge role to play",says Sven Teske, one of the authors of Energy Revolution, a joint report from Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council, published in 2007 and due to be revised and republished in late 2008.

Like anything else involving vast expenditure, progress on overhauling EU energy infrastructure has been slow. But, says Teske, the pressing issues of climate change and security of supply mean this is changing.

Political targets are key, such as the EU’s aim, declared in March 2007, for 20 percent of energy demand to be met from renewable supplies by 2020. For this to happen, the period between 2010 and 2020 will need to see substantial structural change, says Teske.

Hans de Keulenaer agrees a "renewable infrastructure" needs to be installed. This will enable renewable energy to be fed into the grid from multiple sources, from large-scale installations such as offshore windfarms, to multiple small-scale sources, such as solar panels and rooftop mini wind turbines.

These energy sources are not constant – the sun does not always shine – which can create problems when renewables are scaled up to meet a significant proportion of total demand, says Pau Rey of SmartGrids. At present, "there is no capacity" for handling the renewables revolution. Current grids are "decades old and equipment specifications are out of date", he says.

Multiple challenges

Furthermore, de Keulenaer cautions that the future electricity network based on smart grids will face obstacles, from the lobbying power of the conventional power industry, to ineffective politicians, to communities who do not see why they should accommodate a major wind farm or solar power installation so that demand can be better managed on the other side of the continent. "It always takes longer than you expect", de Keulenaer says, pointing out that Belgium is only now starting work on offshore wind capacity after years of discussion.

Nevertheless, SmartGrids is in the final stages of preparing an initial deployment strategy to make the ‘intelligrid’ a reality. According to Greenpeace’s Teske, "it will be tight" for the EU to start decentralising its power infrastructure to accommodate renewable generation and meet its 20 percent by 2020 renewables commitment. But, he concludes, "I’m optimistic".

Source; www.climatechangecorp.com

OSIsoft Announces New Products for AMI and Smart Grid

OSIsoft, the industry standard in enterprise infrastructure for management of time series data and events, today announced the addition of two products for their Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and Smart Grid initiatives: "PI Smart Connectors" and "PI Business Gateways".

OSIsoft has developed "Smart Connectors" that will interface metering systems (AMI) to the PI System in order to unify, validate, rationalize, store and synchronize the metering data at the speeds necessary to support next generation grid management applications. The PI System acts as a central meter data hub, capable of scaling up to store high fidelity information from tens of millions of meters received at hundreds of thousands of events per second. The real time analysis will shape these data into useable information for the next generation business applications presented as services, via PI Business Gateways. The prime user will be SAP's back office applications for the new enterprise customer support and asset management. In 2007, OSIsoft joined the SAP AMI Lighthouse Council, which is a consortium of vendors and utilities addressing business processes and use cases to support AMI to create the SAP for Utilities solution. While maintaining compatibility with this effort, OSIsoft will also offer a meter data unification and synchronization solution as part of our Business Gateway. These products will manage the tens of millions of meter readings and events, as well as real time analytics to interface AMI to billing and other back office systems.

- PI Smart Connectors interface AMI systems to the PI System. These Connectors automatically discover meters, configure the data points and collect data. They are designed to leverage templates that will allow mass changes to meter attributes and configurations, providing customers with the flexibility to change and rapidly create new business rules.

- PI Business Gateways receive, schedule and respond to service requests from EAM, CIS, CRM, OMS and other back office systems that require communication and data from the AMI systems. The PI Business Gateway is tightly coupled with PI Smart Connectors to provide fast, bi-directional communication between PI and the AMI head-end systems for functions such as connect/disconnect, last gasp, ping, on-demand reads, as well as price signals for demand response.

Benefits include:

- Integration of meter information into the end-to-end view of a utility from generation to the meter, in an event-oriented environment.

- PI High Availability (HA)—a fault tolerant mission critical environment that delivers split architecture security, interface failover, buffering, data replication and a service interface.

- PI AF—a template framework that supports simultaneous models (network connectivity, correlative, or process (CBM)) and meta-data store, making PI a cost-effective, real-time infrastructure that easily supports integration with all Smart Grid participants in an evolving industry.

- Easy integration with Geographic Information Systems, Power Modeling Applications and Outage Management Systems.

- A secure, robust, information infrastructure that stays in place while the systems it collects data from, or the systems it presents data to, evolve.

- Industry standard desktop and web environments, analytics, notifications and alarms already in common use in the industry.

- Standard capabilities that allow users to determine circuit profiles and feeder efficiencies, optimize load, evaluate grid and asset health—all in an actionable environment.

- Positioning for more advanced integration involving the interplay of market dynamics, distributed energy resources and smart homes.

"OSIsoft has been providing real-time event management, retrieval, and deep archiving of volumes of data for scalable management of relevant variables and events for our utility customers for over 25 years. We are very excited about adding AMI data management and the benefits this will bring for our customers. There are a lot of parallels between the SCADA data challenges of 20 years ago and AMI data today that we have already solved. OSIsoft continues to be committed to supplying reliable, highly available and secure software to our customers for their mission critical processes," said Dr. J. Patrick Kennedy, CEO and Founder of OSIsoft.

Smart move for BizzEnergy customers with the 1000th Smart Meter installed

BizzEnergy, announced it has successfully installed its 1000th Smart Meter in it's bid to deliver Smart Meters to 20% of its business customer base by the end of 2008. BizzEnergy already has advanced orders for an additional 1000 meters which it will install by the end of May.

Following successful trials of the technology throughout 2006, BizzEnergy has boosted its campaign to have Smart Meters installed with the majority of its customers. A BizzEnergy Smart Meter enables customers to track their energy consumption and costs by providing the data in half hourly segments. Each month this data is downloaded to BizzEnergy and customers can use it to see when they are using energy and identify what steps they could take to reduce their costs and environmental impact.

James Constant, COO at BizzEnergy comments: "We’re always relentless in our efforts to improve the way in which we do business, and the installation of our 1000th Smart Meter is a significant milestone for us. The fact that we have already taken orders for another 1000 meters to be installed by the end of May signifies our commitment to making this technology available now, rather than sitting back and waiting for Government mandate or subsidy. It's clear that customers no longer want or expect estimated bills, and why should they when the technology exists to make these a thing of the past? The additional visibility that Smart Meters bring means that customers are truly empowered to take more control over costs and cash-flow, whilst still doing their bit for the environment."

Thursday 1 May 2008

Telepathx to License WSN Platform to BPL & Smart Meter OEMs

Telepathx, a Melbourne based smart grid & wireless sensor network provider - will begin conditional licensing of its RFID (radio frequency identification) wireless sensor network (WSN) & communications aggregation technology to Smart meter & Broadband over power line technology original equipment manufactures (OEMs). A move the company said that will allow energy providers and BPL operators a faster return on infrastructure investments.James Eades, Telepathx Chairman & CEO, said in his address to energy officials today the move was necessary because it was clear to many in the industry that there is no one clear solution available for developing the smart grid, and that the consolidation of technologies was necessary to physically enable distribution asset communications.

"It’s very evident that both smart meter & BPL platforms are falling short on delivering the intelligent energy grid” said Eades "…and that by integrating the sensory network platform into smart meter and BPL platforms it would fill the tremendous gap left behind in the distribution network and deliver an intelligent energy grid from end to end."

Eades continued "We and many switchgear OEMs look at the state of these platforms specifically the current generation of smart meters and just see another wasted opportunity; simply because they just haven’t gone far enough from a grid automation perspective, it’s a single use system and given the cost involved we think future smart meter deployments should have the capacity to go beyond the grid & generate revenues to cover the cost of these multi billion dollar AMR/AMI rollouts being planned; and this is what our platform was designed to do"

Market analyst April Sommers said "from the hardware and software we have seen this development would be very significant and she predicts it may be enough too persuade many energy companies currently sitting on the AMI fence to start implementing their smart meter strategies sooner because there is now a clear path and solution available for every appliance on the distribution network".

Sommers added "his is a very complete and well thought out asset tracking and logistics platform, from edge sensory components on the grid all the way through the supply chain. Telepathx sensors monitor fuses, insulators and cables and they have developers embedding this technology into distribution transformers, as shown last week at the IEEE PES show in Chicago, they are also developing the industries next generation switchgear with built in self managing intelligence; these are the core appliances that make up the distribution network and from an automation standpoint this would be highly beneficial to network operators to get these devices talking to meters and BPL routers as soon as possible.

What this platform does beyond energy grid management is just down right clever Sommers added it provides monitoring services via very innovative sensors to virtually every utility and public essential service provider imaginable, even local business and residents benefit and this is how it generates revenue.

It just makes you think how smart, smart meters will become because this is just the tip of the iceberg on what this platform can deliver, and the company predicts that many well placed electric meters have the capacity to be cash positive in just months."

World's First Transmission Voltage Superconductor Cable Energized In LIPA's Power Grid

LIPA have announced a cable system able to carry 574 megawatts of power to local residents and businesses that will significantly develop the development of electricity superhighways.

It will be the world’s first high temperature superconductor (HTS) power transmission cable system in a commercial power grid. The 138,000 volt (138 kV) system, which consists of three individual HTS power cable phases running in parallel, was energized on April 22, 2008 and is operating successfully in LIPA’s Holbrook transmission right of way. The cable system, including six outdoor terminations for connection to LIPA’s grid, was designed, manufactured and installed by Nexans, the worldwide leader in the cable industry. The cable utilizes HTS wire produced by AMSC, which also is the prime contractor for the project. The 2,000-foot-long cable system is cryogenically cooled using a liquid nitrogen refrigeration system from Air Liquide.

The Department of Energy (DOE) previously funded $27.5 million of the $58.5 million total project cost, which advances the Department’s ongoing efforts, through the Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, to modernize the Nation’s electricity delivery infrastructure.

The cable system contains hair-thin, ribbon-shaped HTS wires that conduct 150 times the electricity of similar sized copper wires. This power density advantage enables transmission-voltage HTS cables to utilize far less wire and yet conduct up to five times more power – in a smaller right of way – than traditional copper-based cables. When operated at full capacity, the new HTS cable system is capable of transmitting up to 574 megawatts (MW) of electricity, enough to power 300,000 homes. HTS power cables are envisioned by the DOE as a component of a modern electricity superhighway – one that is free of bottlenecks and can readily transmit power to customers from remote generation sites, such as wind farms.

HTS cables conduct electricity with virtually no electrical losses, meaning more of the power generated at power plants gets to customers. Conventional power grids typically lose seven to 10 percent of power due to the inherent electrical resistance experienced with copper wires. The higher electrical efficiency of HTS cables provides a means to reduce carbon emissions while meeting the growing demand for electric power in the digital age.

Alternating current HTS power cables have inherently low impedance, which means they can draw power flow away from overtaxed conventional cables or overhead lines, thereby relieving network congestion. They can also be specially designed to have very low impedance (VLI) characteristics. When deployed in strategic locations, VLI superconductor cables, such as the one currently operating in LIPA’s power grid, can rapidly absorb additional power flows when conventional power grid components are damaged during electrical storms or other events. Because HTS cables are self-adjusting, they are expected to become core components of intelligent, more secure power networks.

LIPA is the third electric utility in the United States to have deployed an HTS cable system in its power grid. In the summer of 2006, National Grid and American Electric Power energized distribution voltage HTS power cable systems in Albany, New York and Columbus, Ohio, respectively. At nearly half a mile in length, LIPA’s HTS cable system is the longest of the three. It also is the first to operate at transmission voltages. After an initial operational period and following performance and economic reviews of the cable system, LIPA plans to retain the new superconductor cable as a permanent part of its grid.

In mid-2007, AMSC announced that it would lead the development of an extension of LIPA’s HTS cable system. The new cable will be powered by AMSC’s second generation (2G) HTS wire, branded as 344 superconductors. AMSC, who will again serve as the project’s prime contractor and wire supplier, has chosen Nexans as the cable manufacturer and Air Liquide as the provider of the cryogenics system. The DOE plans to provide up to $9 million in cost sharing for the $18 million project.

DOE Selects Projects for up to $50 Million of Federal Funding to Modernize the Nation's Electricity Grid and Achieve 15% Reduction in US Peak Load

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Assistant Secretary for Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability Kevin Kolevar today announced the Department’s plans to invest up to $50 million over five years (Fiscal Years 2008 - 2012), subject to appropriations from Congress, in nine demonstration projects competitively selected to increase efficiency in the nation’s electricity grid.

The Renewable and Distributed Systems Integration (RDSI) technologies demonstrated in these projects aim to reduce peak load electricity demand by at least 15 percent at distribution feeders—the power lines delivering electricity to consumers—and are part of the Bush Administration’s ongoing efforts to enhance the efficiency and reliability of our nation’s energy infrastructure to ensure a reliable supply of energy to all Americans.

"Cutting-edge technologies that enhance the efficiency and dependability of the nation’s electricity grid are critical to the Bush Administration's overarching goal of ensuring an affordable and reliable supply of electricity to the American people," Assistant Secretary Kolevar said. "These proposals will help to increase reliability in our electricity grid by defraying both the cost and effort associated with upgrading distribution lines or adding new generation capacity to meet peak electrical load, furthering our ongoing efforts to increase national economic and energy security."

The projects were selected in response to DOE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE) April 2007 Funding Opportunity Announcement seeking applications for research and development activities to improve the security of controls systems for energy delivery and increase the use of distributed generation during peak load periods. Negotiations between selected applicants and OE will begin immediately to determine final project plans and funding levels. Selected projects include:

Allegheny Power will develop the "West Virginia Super Circuit" in conjunction with West Virginia University (WVU) Research Park, WVU Advanced Power and Electricity Research Center, North Carolina State University, Research and Development Solutions, Augusta Systems, Inc., and Tollgrade Communications. They will improve distribution system performance, reliability, and security of electric supply through the integration of distributed resources and advanced technologies. (Duration: 5 years; Cost: $5.4 million federal/4 million non-federal)

ATK Launch Systems, along with partners Rocky Mountain Power and P&E AUTOMATION, will demonstrate load reduction through an integrated network of diverse renewable generation technologies and intelligent automation. The project will integrate renewable generation and energy storage resources, including a novel compressed-air generation technology, wind-turbines, heat recovery systems, solar trough booster technology, a steam turbine, and hydro-turbine resources. (Duration: 5 years; Cost: $1.6 million federal/$2 million non-federal)

Chevron Energy Solutions will collaborate with Alameda County, PG&E, VRB Power Systems, SatCon Technology Corporation, the University of Wisconsin, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Energy and Environmental Economics to significantly reduce peak load and measurably improve power reliability at the Santa Rita Jail. The project will integrate solar energy, fuel cell, energy storage and control systems. (Duration: 3 years; Cost: $7 million federal/$7 million non-federal)

The City of Fort Collins, in cooperation with Larimer County, Colorado State University, InteGrid Lab, Community Foundation of Northern Colorado, the Governor’s Energy Office, Advanced Energy, Woodward, Spirae, and Eaton, will research, develop, and demonstrate a 3.5 megawatt coordinated and integrated system of Mixed Distributed Resources in Fort Collins to Achieve a 20-30 percent peak load reduction on multiple distribution feeders. (Duration: 3 years; Cost: $6.3 million federal/$4.9 million non-federal)

Consolidated Edison Co. of New York, Inc., along with Verizon, Innovative Power, Infotility, and Enernex, will develop and demonstrate methodologies to achieve true interoperability between a delivery company and end-use retail electric customers, enhancing the reliability of the distribution grid and the efficiency of its operations. (Duration: 3 years; Cost: $6.8 million federal/6.2 million non-federal)

The Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) will collaborate with Exelon/ComEd, Galvin Electricity Initiative, S&C Electric, and others to develop and demonstrate a system that will achieve “perfect power” at the main campus of IIT through the implementation of distributed resources, advanced sensing, switching, feeder reconfiguration, and controls. This effort will be replicable at any municipality-sized system. (Duration: 5 years; Cost: $7 million federal/$5.2 million non-federal)

San Diego Gas and Electric will develop a dispatchable distribution feeder for peak load reduction and wind-farming in conjunction with: Horizon Energy Group, Advanced Control Systems, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the University of San Diego, Motorola, and Lockheed Martin. The project aims to prove the effectiveness of integrating multiple distributed energy resources with advanced controls and communication systems to improve stability and reduce peak loads on feeders/substations. (Duration: 3 years; Cost $6.9 million federal/$4 million non-federal)

The University of Hawaii, in cooperation with General Electric, Hawaiian Electric Company, Inc., Maui Electric Company, Columbus Electric Cooperative, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, Sentech, and UPC Wind, will explore the management of distribution system resources for improved service quality and reliability, transmission congestion relief, and grid support functions. (Duration: 3 years; Cost: $7 million federal/$8 million non-federal)

The University of Nevada will collaborate with homebuilder Pulte Homes, Nevada Power Company, and GE Ecomagination to address the construction of energy efficient homes that overcome electricity grid integration, control, and communications issues by building integrated photovoltaic systems, battery energy storage, and consumer products linked to advanced meters that enable and facilitate an efficient response to consumer energy demands. (Duration: 5 years: Cost: $6.9 million federal/$13.9 million non-federal)

RDSI focuses on integrating renewable energy, distributed generation, energy storage, thermally activated technologies, and demand response into the electric distribution and transmission system. This integration is aimed toward managing peak loads, offering new value-added services such as differentiated power quality to meet individual user needs, and enhancing asset use.