Press/Announcements

OATI Virtual Power Plants for Balancing Variable Generation

Open Access Technology International, Inc. (OATI) provides innovative set of solutions to integrate demand side assets and minimize cost of balancing services.

Minneapolis, MN: June 18, 2013 – OATI announces a comprehensive set of capabilities for use of demand response (DR) and distributed energy resources (DER) for balancing of variable generation such as wind power and solar PV. The increased penetration of intermittent renewable resources, also known as Variable Generation or Variable Energy Resources, is challenging system operators to maintain sufficient resources cost-effectively to supply required ramping, regulation, and balancing energy to balance the system supply and demand.

OATI is now offering a suite of products to enable system operators to utilize DR and certain types of DER to reliably supply the required balancing services. OATI webDistribute provides for creation of Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) through aggregation of DR-DER capabilities at different grid locations, and for accurate current and forward forecasting of the VPP capabilities for supply of various ancillary and balancing services. OATI webDistribute also provides for scheduling, dispatch, and real-time control of these resources. These capabilities are further supported by OATI webDispatch, which provides for economic optimization of DR-DER, along with conventional generation and dispatchable trades for supply of required energy and reserve capacities.

The VPP concept has been used thus far by the industry to aggregate distributed generation resources. OATI believes the extension of the VPP to include DR, as is done in OATI’s webSmartEnergy suite, is an important step forward in leveraging DR-DER capabilities to mitigate operational impacts of variable generation and transform the DR-DER capabilities into tradable products.

OATI provides innovative software solutions that simplify, streamline, and empower the operational tasks required in today’s energy commerce and Smart Grid. With more than 1,200 customers in North America, OATI successfully deploys large, complicated, and diverse mission-critical applications committed to industry standards and stringent NERC CIP guidelines. OATI (www.oati.com) is the leading provider of Smart Grid, Energy Trading and Risk Management, Transmission Scheduling, Congestion Management, and Market Management products and services, with headquarters in Minneapolis, Minnesota and an office in Redwood City, California. For more information, please contact sales@oati.net.