Environmental drivers, increased attention to resiliency, and the declining cost of solar PV and battery storage are resulting in rising levels of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs), both in front-of- and behind-the-meter.  These resources, especially customer and 3rd-party owned assets, are having an impact on load profiles and the distribution grid’s power flows, voltage levels, and power quality, creating scheduling and operating challenges for the distribution system operators.

However, with proper visibility and dispatchability, the DERs can be utilized to shape load profiles and increase power factor, improve voltage profiles, and help enhance distribution system reliability.  The DERs can also be used to provide grid services at the bulk power level to supplement resource adequacy and reserves requirements, to provide balancing energy, regulation, and ramping services. Further, with FERC Order 841 enabling participation of storage (and other DERs) as small as 100kW in ISO/RTO markets, economic opportunities exist for DER aggregation and market participation.

All the above are enabled with proper monitoring and capabilities to control distributed assets and further employ them to deliver the grid services in support of both distribution and bulk power operations and markets. This is accomplished through the DER Management System, OATI webSmartEnergy^® DERMS, with bi-directional connection with the DER assets for telemetry and control. Traditionally, Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems provided the connection to field assets to provide grid services. However, utility SCADA systems typically do not provide a cost-effective means of connecting with smaller assets, nor provide the cyber security, and often the scalability needed to support large numbers of data points presented by DERs.

Get Higher Visibility and Situational Awareness with OATI’s Solution

OATI IoT SCADA™ is engineered with advanced architecture and technologies to connect in real-time to large numbers of end-points. The solution is augmented with stringent cyber security measures and reaches vast number of data points using secured public (or private) data communications networks, low-cost commodity-level gateways, sensing, and control devices, allowing for real-time telemetry and control. Supporting a wide array of industrial and IoT protocols, OATI IoT SCADA™ provides grid operators with situational awareness to all DER assets as well as the distribution grid equipment. Additional features combine modeling, advanced analytics, and decision support tools provided by OATI’s webSmartEnergy^® DERMS, resulting in effective forecasting of the capabilities of DERs, scheduling and control of their operation, bulk power, and support for market operations.

This is just a glimpse at how the advanced architecture of OATI IoT SCADA™ can deliver enhanced SCADA functionality for demand-side assets, DERs, and distribution grid equipment. Want to know about the limitless possibilities with OATI IoT SCADA™? Get in touch with our experts at Sales@oati.net for detailed information.