Enhancing Grid Stability with Demand Flexibility

This article was first published in T&D World by Edo authors, Alicia Noriega and Easan Drury, on July 25, 2024.

Connecticut’s largest electric distribution company has launched an innovative initiative to enhance grid reliability, reduce carbon emissions, and lower energy costs for business customers. The initiative prioritizes equity, focusing exclusively on underserved communities. It is Connecticut’s first-of-its-kind commercial virtual power plant (VPP) and was chosen as one of the first Innovative Energy Solutions (IES) programs supported by the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA).

The initiative seeks to engage 25 business customers over 18 months and focuses on historically hard-to-reach customers, such as schools, municipalities, and community centers, to support Connecticut’s ambitious objective of achieving 100% zero-carbon electricity by 2040.

Interest in VPPs to provide demand flexibility services—an advancement of demand response—has surged dramatically in recent years. Traditional demand-side management initiatives such as demand response (DR) and energy efficiency programs can struggle to deliver reliable grid services when needed most because participation is scattered and inconsistent, making it challenging to ensure grid stability during peak demand. Demand flexibility initiatives use communication and control technologies paired with “smart,” often AI-based, dispatch algorithms to shift electricity usage to align with when supply is abundant and/or clean in a reliable and repeatable manner, with little to no impact on building occupants. This enables buildings and distributed energy resources (DERs) to be reliably scheduled and dispatched to improve grid congestion and reliability. It differs from demand response by mirroring supply-side resources in availability and predictability.

Several factors drive the need for these services, including the growing peak demand from vehicle and building electrification, manufacturing and data center onshoring, and peaker plant retirement. VPPs enable utilities to manage these demands by integrating DERs and optimizing their usage, offering a cleaner and more efficient alternative to traditional peaker plants.

Edo, a leader in demand flexibility pilots for multiple utilities, spearheads the latest initiative in Connecticut, which is enabled by $1.4 million in funding through the IES program. This first-of-its-kind commercial VPP initiative allows Edo to partner with Connecticut’s largest electric distribution company to demonstrate scalability and potential for widespread adoption.

What/Why/How

Demand flexibility programs derive most value from flexible loads in capacity-constrained areas with periods of high congestion and/or location-based costs. Estimating the impact and opportunity for demand flexibility on the grid requires characterizing buildings and DERs and understanding their locations within the electric grid network.

Generally, Edo begins the program design phase by evaluating demand flexibility opportunities for buildings within a specific region on a utility network, such as a substation or feeder, based on utility-identified areas of congestion. Edo analyzes various spatial and temporal scales to determine the best mitigation measures, considering seasonality, day-of-week, and time-of-day load profiles in relation to grid constraints. Access to interval meter data at hourly or sub-hourly intervals is critical, so they have found greater success in areas with advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) or available interval data. Growth planning may also be incorporated to evaluate the locational impact of population growth, increased vehicle and building electrification, and growth in DER adoption, such as solar photovoltaics (PV).

This analysis helps identify ideal customers and building characteristics to define appropriate technology and recruitment strategies. Edo understands that solutions must include the types of buildings driving load on critical pieces of distribution infrastructure, which can vary between substation service areas and even by feeder.

Transforming Buildings

Once buildings are enrolled, Edo installs an onsite gateway that communicates directly with network-connected device controllers, building sensors, and energy meters. Edo’s operations engineers use near-real-time data to apply analytics to evaluate building performance and identify low-cost energy conservation measures (ECMs), such as repairing broken sensors and dampers and adjusting schedules.

After optimizing building performance, Edo develops predictive load forecasting models using machine learning algorithms. These models forecast the whole building’s energy load based on future weather, building occupancy, and inferred operating schedules. They also forecast the impact of various heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) control measures to identify optimal control strategies that enable load shifting and shedding while maintaining occupant comfort.

Edo’s system is designed to be highly data-driven and robust to uncertainties, enabling scale across multiple equipment systems and building types. After evaluating various potential strategies, it identifies the optimal measures to achieve the desired load reduction, sending these schedules to the edge control service on the onsite gateway. Edo provides a user interface so utilities and building operators can query scheduled and active events, update or cancel existing events, and evaluate building and DER performance.

Electric Utility Integration

Edo can integrate directly with utility systems, including distributed energy resource management systems (DERMs) and advanced distribution management systems (ADMS), to communicate forecasted flexibility potential from connected buildings and DERs. After evaluating the availability of flexible capacity from buildings and DERs, utilities can schedule and dispatch this flexibility by communicating a load reduction request.

Utilities are at multiple stages with their DERMs readiness and demand flexibility sophistication, and it is essential to meet them where they are in terms of communication capabilities. In territories where utilities do not have DERMs rolled out, Edo is responding to manual notifications. For others, such as in an ongoing project in Spokane, WA, Edo developed an aggregation service to bundle flexibility from multiple co-located buildings and DERs, providing day-ahead flexibility forecasts for sub-feeder zones in the distribution grid. In Connecticut, where the utility partner needs a DERMs provider or VPP readiness, Edo will facilitate customers’ participation in the existing demand response program, Connected Solutions, to expand enrollment with traditionally hard-to-reach customers.

Empower Utilities

Edo’s solution simultaneously identifies operational energy efficiency measures while preparing buildings to participate in demand flexibility events with minimal occupant impact. Leveraging the same technology for both purposes ensures utilities can procure and value this innovative demand flexibility solution, addressing a significant barrier to scaling within the utility demand-side management space. By offering a comprehensive suite of efficiency, demand response, and grid operations services, Edo’s demand flexibility and VPP solutions empower utilities to achieve greater reliability, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness.

The upcoming Connecticut pilot marks the beginning of a journey to prove the value of demand flexibility in the state. As Connecticut leads the way in embracing demand flexibility, this pilot aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of innovative solutions in enhancing grid reliability, reducing carbon emissions, and lowering energy costs. Success in this program will showcase the potential benefits and provide a blueprint for future adoption and investment in more advanced communication and control strategies. It is a model for other regions to pursue initiatives supporting an affordable, reliably clean energy transition.

Authors:

Alicia Noriega

Alicia is the product owner for Utility Solutions at Edo. She has experience across various sustainability-focused topic areas, including energy management technologies, city-scale urban energy analysis, and policy development. Before Edo, Alicia ran the nationally recognized Real Time Energy Management (RTEM) program at the NY State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), expanding it from large commercial buildings to tenant spaces and industrial settings. Alicia is passionate about engaging and facilitating stakeholders on several technical and socio-political-related topics within private and public organizations. Alicia is a certified energy manager with a master’s degree from MIT and a bachelor’s degree from William and Mary.

Easan Drury

Easan Drury is the Director of R&D at Edo, where he oversees the development of new technologies that enable buildings and DERs to become dispatchable grid assets. He has over two decades of experience developing novel hardware and software solutions in clean tech. Prior to Edo, Easan led technical teams at the National Renewable Energy Lab, SunEdison, and co-founded a solar financing startup. Easan holds a PhD and MS in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University and a bachelor’s in physics from the University of California, Berkeley.