Businesses are working towards sustainable power generation taking into consideration the climate-related benefits and decreasing costs of the renewable energy resources. A rampant transformation is taking place in the power sector leading to retirement of conventional thermal generation, increasing the amount of renewable generation and Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). Now, how to ensure grid reliability and power quality for bulk renewable generation? The answer is Grid Services.

Grid Services are a set of ancillary services that fulfil both the aspects of bulk power and distribution level reliability requirement. With assets like end-use Commercial and Industrial (C&I) loads and dispatchable DER, the power utilities have access to alternative resources that help provide Grid Services at economical prices. 

OATI offers solutions that provide utilities access to end-use loads, along with other demand-side assets, such as energy storage and solar PV, in each utility’s service territory. All these resources can be aggregated into Virtual Power Plant (VPP) to provide a variety of ancillary Grid Services. These services include fast responding Frequency Response, Regulating Reserves, Operating, Supplemental, and Load-Following Reserves, Balancing Energy, and Capacity.

The benefits of OATI’s suite of solutions are limitless.  It enables provision of various Grid Services that add significant value to both the grid operators and the demand-side asset owners who are supplying valuable grid reliability services. The distributed resource management solutions provide scalability, performance, and security needed to support higher penetrations of Smart Grid functionality and renewable resources. End-to-end functionality can be achieved through full integration with field equipment, operations, and enterprise systems. Real-time data connects demand-side resources to grid operations, and OATI’s end-to-end solutions help utilities harness the reliability, economic and social values of their power system operations and demand-side assets. 

OATI System for Hawaiian Electric Companies Goes into Production

OATI’s Grid Services Management System for Hawaii is in production operation now. The system is built on OATI webSmartEnergy^® DERMS, and is designed to enroll, forecast, schedule, dispatch/control, and settle a diverse set of behind-the-meter resources supplying Reserve Capacity and Fast Frequency Response (FFR) services at Oahu and Maui. The resources include residential water heaters and PV-paired battery storage systems at residential and commercial sites. The increasing penetration of DERs is reaching a level where it can effectively provide reliable and economic services to the bulk system and to the distribution grid, benefitting the grid and participating customers.

Need more clarity on Grid Services? Request your copy of the Grid Services from Demand-Side Resources Solution Brief to get all the information.