For many utilities, Distributed Energy Resource (DER) such as solar PV challenge and compound the economics of supply and demand. Distributed solar PVs decrease rate-based revenue while increasing operational risks for the utility. For instance, rooftop solar owners still rely on grid-supplied electricity at night or on cloudy days when solar energy isn’t available. In addition, if they export power under net metering tariff, they rely on infrastructure owned, operated, and maintained by the utilities. Utilities are therefore burdened with the costs of PV integration and reliability operations while suffering a loss of revenue at the same time.

With increasing amounts of intermittent renewable generation and a growing need for frequency response and ancillary services to maintain grid reliability and power quality, utilities need an economically viable way to provide these services. OATI recognizes the challenges utilities are facing and has the technical know-how and experience to provide solutions they can count on.

One of the major challenges utilities currently face is how to integrate and manage the solar PVs on their footprint. OATI provides an end-to-end PV management solution that utilizes smart inverter technologies to provide a host of grid services. OATI’s smart inverters for DERs enable behind-the-meter and utility scale solar PV generation, and storage assets, to provide grid services similar to conventional power plants. When these DER assets are paired with smart inverter technologies, they can provide ancillary services — frequency control, ramping capabilities and voltage regulation — even at night, when solar PV assets cannot generate power. This capability has opened the doors for utilities to begin relying on distributed solar PV and storage assets to maintain and enhance distribution system reliability and further their attempts toward a carbon-free power grid of the future.

OATI Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) is engineered to provide utilities the capabilities to integrate, manage, and control end-use residential and commercial and industrial (C&I) loads and other dispatchable DERs, such as energy storage and solar PV, within a utility’s service territory. These resources can then be aggregated into Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) to provide a utility a variety of grid services.

Interested in Grid Services? Click here to request a grid services solution brief.

If you need more information and/or help regarding solar PV and grid services and/or other OATI DR/DERs solutions, email sales@oati.net to get expert advice.