A UK-based smart grid startup is one of five companies participating in a test of distributed energy resource management software (DERMS), conducted by the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
“Smarter Grid Solutions has been putting its software into play to balance the ups and downs of intermittent wind and solar power on constrained UK grids,” Greentech Media reports. “Using behind-the-meter energy resources like batteries, combined heat and power systems, and remote-controlled water heaters, combined with grid devices like capacitor banks and voltage regulators, SGS is now managing moment-by-moment grid balancing across systems carrying roughly 120 megawatts of renewable energy, in projects stretching from Scotland’s Orkney Islands to the heart of London.”
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DERMS is a distribution-level replication of “the larger-scale grid-balancing efforts that have allowed grid operators like ERCOT or utilities like Xcel Energy to integrate a growing share of wind power into their operations,” St. John writes.
“This kind of real-time integration of customer-sited and utility-controlled systems is still a rarity in terms of real-world grid operations.” But GTM Research analyst Omar Saadeh notes that “the proliferation of distributed generation is changing the business landscape.”
