WORLD-GENERATION MAY/JUNE 2016
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What do solar photovoltaic (PV) sys-
tems, combined heat and power (CHP)
units, controllable loads like lighting, air
conditioning and water heating, wind tur-
bines, battery energy storage, diesel and
natural gas generators, biomass gasifiers,
fuel cells, and thermal storage have in
common? Yep, they are all flexible
resources connected at the distribution
level of the power grid, or directly to the
loads they serve – collectively referred to
as Distributed Energy Resources (DER).
Companies, communities, and individuals
are investing in their own power sources
and energy management systems because
they want more control over their energy
costs, want to use more clean energy, or
need higher reliability than their utility
provider offers.
The proliferation of DER and, in par-
ticular, the inclusion of more and more
variable renewable energy (wind and
solar), challenge the existing power sys-
tem’s ability to maintain adequate
reserves, system reliability, and end use
power quality without significant grid
upgrades, but are clearly what customers
want. What if DER were good not only for
their owners, but for the entire electricity
system as well? What if they could be
used to lower costs for everyone, enable
new energy solutions for customers, cre-
ate new revenue streams for utilities and
energy service providers, decrease car-
bon emissions and pollution, all the while
making the system more stable and resil-
ient?
They can! Spirae’s Wave® software
platform harnesses DER to maximize
flexibility, simplify operations, optimize
value and enhance grid performance.
The Wave platform treats each DER
as a set of capabilities – for example, the
provision or consumption of active and
reactive power. A battery energy storage
system owned by a grocery store can
absorb electricity while nearby PV sys-
tems are generating more power than is
needed locally, and later self-supply to
reduce its peak consumption and thereby
reduce demand charges for its owner. The
battery’s smart inverter can decrease
power factor to support the inductive
loads on the feeder. A fleet of such batter-
ies can be managed in concert to optimize
value for their owners and the grid. The
question is, who decides when they are
dispatched, for what purpose, and to
whose benefit? Can this be done without
impacting grid operations? Will there be
side effects that negatively impact certain
stakeholders? These are some of the
major questions with which utilities, legis-
lators, regulators, and DER stakeholders
are grappling.
DER STAKEHOLDERS
Spirae’s Wave platform addresses the
technical aspect of the question. It expos-
es the capabilities available from dynamic
portfolios of DER to different stakehold-
ers to meet a variety of system needs that
begin with the priorities of the asset
owner (such as onsite power generation
and demand charge reduction) and
extend to the needs of the electric distri-
bution and transmission systems (such as
voltage support and frequency regula-
tion). Providing grid services at the feed-
er level for optimizing grid operations is
more efficient and reliable than building
new system capacity. In effect, Spirae’s
Wave software serves as a platform that
allows different stakeholders to seamless-
ly interact to monetize different benefits
from different resources at different
times.
Sounds too good to be true? Not when
you consider the fact that Spirae has more
than a decade of experience in developing
and deploying these types of solutions.
Spirae has been fortunate to work with
numerous customers at the forefront of
DER innovations to develop complex con-
trol algorithms and software systems to
streamline the design, deployment and
operations of DER-based systems.
VIRTUAL POWER PLANTS
The Danish transmission system
operator Energinet.dk contracted with
Spirae to develop and deploy a distributed
grid management system to optimize the
operation of DER including wind and CHP
systems. The goal was to maximize the
contribution from renewable sources by
actively controlling CHP plants to provide
grid-connected and grid-independent
(islanded) operation of ‘Cells’
(microgrids) to increase economic oppor-
tunities for DER and enhance system reli-
ability. Spirae’s system controlled import
and export of real and reactive power at
the interconnection to transmission; pro-
vided voltage support; and reduced reac-
tive power flows. The system aggregated
resources to create “virtual power plants”
which could participate in markets.
Operation included one-second-trigger
islanding (requiring instant balancing of
loads and generation) as well as planned
islanding and re-synchronization of the
cell to transmission. The system was
deployed successfully on a 60MW cell
[1000+km2, 39MW wind (47 turbines),
37MW CHP, thirteen substations and
28,000 metered customers] operated by
Syd Energi, the local distribution utility.
In another example, the municipal
utility in Fort Collins, Colorado collabo-
rated with Spirae in a U.S. Department of
(continued page 21)
THE FLEXIBILITY OF DER
BY ALISON MASON
Business Development Engineer
Spirae
PERSPECTIVE
