North Carolina is investing heavily in microgrids and smart grid technology for resilience. A recent article in Microgrid Knowledge shows how OATI DERMS will enable live orchestration and control of the cooperatives’ solar and battery storage assets, demand response programs and five microgrids.
Taking the years-long partnership to a new level, North Carolina Electric Membership Corporation (NCEMC) and OATI are implementing a real-time DERMS across NCEMC’s 26 locally owned rural electric cooperatives to improve grid reliability across the state.
Sasan Mokhtari, president and CEO of OATI stated, “For years, OATI and NCEMC have collaborated to deploy some of the most advanced smart grid tools in the world. We are bringing industry-defining, real-time control capabilities into NCEMC’s existing OATI DERMS platform.”
As NCEMC adopts a new approach to grid management, Lee Ragsdale, NCEMC’s senior vice president of strategic projects, shared “About 15% of NCEMC’s peak need is served by DERs, including both utility- and customer-owned solar and energy storage assets.”
Key takeaways from the NCEMC and OATI DERMS partnership:
- After the Hurricane Helene left many rural communities without power, the state announced it would invest $5 million to develop 26 microgrids across the state.
- Microgrids, with their ability to support the grid and serve local loads during a grid outage, are becoming a key part of many utility energy strategies.
- The data and forecasts provided by the next-generation DERMS will also help mitigate operational silos.
- OATI DERMS enables real-time communication for sending dynamic signals to batteries and other resources that can serve the grid.