Smart Energy

Tame the Impacts of Distributed Energy Resources

One of the central issues confronting distribution utilities is managing high levels of intermittent Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). OATI’s webSmartEnergy® DERMS is field-proven, reliable, and secure, managing the technical, operational, and economic challenges of interconnected DERs. Its situational awareness accounts for and mitigates DER impacts, providing key economic value for distribution and bulk power systems as well as for retail customers.

The coordinated management of distributed and renewable generation, energy storage, and Demand Response (DR) resources can deliver significant value to the host utility, including:

  • Enhancing system resiliency and reliability
  • Shifting load away from high price periods
  • Improving load factor through load shaping
  • Minimizing system losses through phase balancing and improved power factor
  • Managing voltage profiles
  • Managing congestion and circuit overloads, which defers capital expenditures
  • Supplying ancillary and other Grid Services to bulk power and electricity markets

In the absence of effective tools to manage high levels of distributed generation, the grid will experience voltage variations, overloads, phase load imbalances, frequency issues (involving microgrids and islanding), and other variations from utility operating standards.

The comprehensive OATI webSmartEnergy® Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) solution allows utilities to manage distribution grids with a variety of interconnected DER assets, including behind-the-meter and larger utility-grade resources, while capitalizing on the benefits from the distributed resources. Just a few of its capabilities include:

  • Topological modeling of the distribution grid and interconnected DR and DER assets
  • Weather and other parameter-adjusted forecasting of DR and DER assets
  • Circuit loading and voltage assessment by each phase for real-time situational awareness, circuit condition forecasting, and “what-if” analysis
  • Coordinated scheduling and optimization of DER asset operations for resiliency, reliability, and economic objectives
  • Circuit and feeder load relief and Volt/VAR management
  • DR-DER dispatch and control for both individual and aggregated assets
  • Active and reactive power dispatch and scheduling, phase balancing, and loss minimization
  • Supply of capacity, energy, ancillary services, and frequency regulation using DR and DER assets
  • Direct, two-way communication with DER assets to provide measurement, monitoring, control, scheduling, dispatch, settlement, and reporting
  • ​Capacity to aggregate DR/DER assets in to Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) that can be used to provide new bulk power services like load following/ramping and Primary Frequency Response (PFR)

To see how the OATI webSmartEnergy® DERMS solution can benefit your utility in grid operations, grid economics, and customer satisfaction, contact us today.