AutoGrid says its new Demand Response Optimization and Management Systems (DROMS) software can cut the cost of demand response systems by 90 percent while increasing the yield of power from demand response events by 30 percent. DROMS has already been deployed and used in demand response programs for City of Palo Alto Utilities and Sacramento Municipal Utility District. City of Palo Alto Utilities has been using DROMS in a program to help large, industrial customers shed power. The system has allowed the utility to shed an average of 1.2 MW of peak demand, saving 3.5 MWh of electricity, per event.
The core of AutoGrid's platform is a dynamic, physics-based optimization engine that reflects the complex interrelationships between generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of power in a region, or within a facility. Similar to e-commerce recommendation engines or algorithms for predicting weather, AutoGrid’s Energy Data Platform uses petabytes of structured and unstructured data to create forecasts of future consumption and grid conditions by examining ongoing trends and relationships between millions of variables.
With this data platform, utilities can unearth usage patterns within their customer base or understand the impact of pricing signals, weather patterns and other variables to anticipate grid stress. The system learns continuously and becomes more accurate as more data becomes available.
Based on open protocols such as OpenADR, the industry standard for automated demand response, DROMS is a cloud-based service for implementing and managing a wide range of power management programs such as direct load control, critical peak pricing, peak-time rebates and demand bidding. It does not require additional hardware and is scalable and secure, says the company.
Scientists at the Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are also working on automated demand response technology.
