ENER-i.AI Customer Benefits
ENER-i.AI offers electric distribution utilities a state-of-the-art model-based toolset to optimize energy planning, operations, and market management. This aids in unlocking new business models that can address the needs and challenges of the ever-changing electricity ecosystem.
Leading CoOps are not content to wait for innovation to trickle down from large or urban utilities, but rather they are embracing ways to use emerging technology to better serve their members today. Co-ops see distributed energy resources as one more tool to generate local jobs, boost property taxes, and save their members money.
Our advanced and model-based software platform is specifically designed to help distribution utilities maximize value from clean energy technologies, engage consumers, become more sustainable, and help lower total system costs. For customers just getting started or looking to improve their current systems, our team of software and engineering experts will undergo a detailed network digitization effort to serve as the basis for your utility smart grid.
We maximize useable asset lifetime by providing insightful opportunities to avoid unnecessary investments in distribution or transmission infrastructure (non-wires alternatives).
In addition to utilities, marketers, and installers of DER and electrification are affected by the cost of acquiring customers. In the case of inaccurate forecasts and to address the costs of acquiring new customers, the cost impacts present a significant hindrance to the growth of DER and electrification adoption. These impacts can be alleviated through the use of advanced data, modeling, and analytics.
PROBLEMS UTILITIES ARE FACING
The distribution system is becoming overloaded and cannot accommodate more DER without either DERMS or massive upgrades.
- Regulators can expedite progress toward renewable energy targets and GHG reduction goals through expanded, low-cost, expansion of “Hosting Capacity”
- Grid Operators are afforded visibility and control of DER to the grid edge. Can use DER to provide “Non-Wired Alternatives” to solve grid management problems
- Aggregators can create large blocks of DER to provide grid services and collectively bargain rates. Allows an integration pathway to ISO or Wholesale Markets
- DER Developers can dramatically reduce interconnection costs and\ stabilize timelines to PTO. Provides options when faced with project-killing upgrades
Aging infrastructure creating resiliency problems ($150 billion outages)…
Cybersecurity risks rising…
Competitive retail markets thinning margins for reliability & resiliency…
Siloed legacy software systems…
Severe incoherence between digitization planning & operations through all phases
- Generation, transmission, distribution, consumers & behind-the-meter technologies
- Dissolving transmission & distribution seams
Lack of infrastructure coordination
- Communications
- Transportation
- Water
- Gas
- Hydrogen
OPTIMIZE DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM PERFORMANCE WITH UTILITY-WIDE CONNECTED SYSTEMS AND DATA
identify and publish locations where distributed energy resources will provide grid benefits and encourage interconnection; predict program effectiveness including incentives, pricing schemes, and demand response; and inform asset management strategies that respond to supply and demand.
Reduce the uncertainty and time associated with interconnecting an ever-increasing amount of charging infrastructure that needs to be interconnected.
Utilities
- Actively manage a changing grid for optimal deployment and investment
Regulators & Government –
- Quickly evaluate and anticipate grid options in a fast-changing world
Developers –
- Enable efficient and cost-effective early-stage project siting
- Plan and manage high-value investments in zero-emission vehicle infrastructure
- Integrated Generation-Transmission-Distribution-Microgrid & Distributed Energy Resources Planning & Simulation
- Optimal Long-Term Capacity Planning Considering DERs & Energy Storage
- Simulation of Short-Term Optimal DER Operation
- Optimization-Based DER Hosting Capacity
- Optimization-Based DER Locational Value Analysis
- Non-Wires Alternatives Analysis
- Energy Storage Grid Services Valuation
- Microgrid Optimal DER Planning
All in a state-of-the-art cloud solution that integrates energy and asset management in a single intuitive dashboard.
Providing full remote visibility of asset and electrical-system behavior
ENER-I.AI establishes a new benchmark for simplicity and flexibility in asset-performance management. It gives you the power of seeing and optimizing your site equipment behavior anytime, anywhere via an intuitive graphic interface, resulting in greater reliability and availability and minimized unplanned maintenance.
Connectivity Model
Is your Network Model ready for Digital Transformation and Smart Grid Modernization?
Everything in the grid is connected, however often a utility’s data will say otherwise. An effective and efficient distribution system must be modeled and geo-rectified at spatial levels ranging from the component/grid-edge devices to the substation/distribution service territory that affects the bulk system. These components’ detailed thermal, physical, and electrical properties should be modeled to approximate the characteristics of real-world systems as closely as possible.
Almost 100 percent of the work a utility does, relies on a model-centric view of the entire electrical grid – often referred to as a network digital twin. The foundational digital network view ensures accurate electrical connectivity, provides a consistent and shared network model representing the as-built and as-operated statuses and supports a solid understanding of relationships and dependencies between assets.
ENER-i.AI helps orchestrate the interplay between planning and operations amid the growing complexity of digital transformation for generation, transmission, distribution, and behind-the-meter opportunities through situational awareness and informed insight.
- Delivering all key data sources in one intuitive, graphical display empowers leaders with all the critical information necessary to make excellent business decisions.
- Our cloud-based solutions create and maintain, an accurate view of complex network assets that are easily accessible by all stakeholders, wherever and whenever needed.
- Easily maintain comprehensive knowledge of device characteristics, health, configuration, compliance, and associated tasks.
The ENER-i .AI Electrical Connectivity Model shall have the latest connectivity information about all the grid stages, including forecasting, planning, designing, as-built, and as-operated views for both transmission and distribution. Also, it shares and receives information from other existing planning, engineering, and operational systems seamlessly by consuming and exposing services.
Maintaining and managing the electrical connectivity model through the lifecycle of the grid is critical. Utilities generally have a range of enterprise systems in the area of Asset Management, Work Management, Engineering, Mapping and GIS, Mobile Mapping, Planning, Operations, Engineering, etc. This challenge the ENER-i™ Energy Intelligence Platform overcomes by providing a single version of the truth about grid connectivity by consolidating the information from various source systems. Then the ENER-i™ Energy Intelligence Platform visually presents the dynamic, real-world scenario of the grid, including the status of various equipment, configurations, and settings. Easily maintain comprehensive knowledge of device characteristics, health, and configuration.
