Report shows utilities have been busy with smart grid

October 16, 2013 | By Barbara Vergetis Lundin

EPRI has published a five-year update report for its Smart Grid Demonstration Initiative, a seven-year collaborative research effort focused on design, implementation, and assessment of field demonstrations to address prevalent challenges with integrating distributed energy resources in grid and market operations to create a Virtual Power Plant.

As part of the update, FirstEnergy has launched an Integrated Control Platform Visualization project, which provides an integrated view of data and information from various distribution assets to assist operations. Data from four devices is displayed via the system: direct load control devices, distribution line sensors, substation meters, and ice storage for permanent peak load shifting.

Southern California Edison has nine sub-projects comprising the Irvine Smart Grid Demonstration Project (ISGD) and is in the process of completing installation and testing as part of ISGD's Energy Smart Customer Solutions Measurement and Verification activities. For example, electrical work has been completed on demonstration homes that include photovoltaic solar panels, energy storage units, appliances, and energy monitoring devices; the customer equipment has begun transmitting data, which is being tested and validated.

Public Service of New Mexico is using storage for simultaneous voltage smoothing and peak shifting. At scale, or combined with other storage resources within the system, energy storage has been able to use intermittent renewable generation and create a firm, dispatchable resource.

Salt River Project has launched a Field Area Network (FAN) Pilot -- a wireless broadband network that can be integrated with multiple devices and applications across a utility -- to serve as the unifying infrastructure of its field area network.

Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) is using smart grid data to help detect power theft by integrating and analyzing data to identify potential customer theft, and developing algorithms to assess information from a number of sources, including customer records, meter records, service orders, meter values, and more. The utility expects to significantly reduce its loss of 1 percent of revenue from power theft.

Also, as part of SMUD's Residential Summer Solutions program, participants opting for a time of use, critical peak pricing rate dropped 70 percent more load during peak events than those on direct load control.

For more:
- see this report

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