News

New Power Technologies and GRIDiant to Provide Smart Grid Analytics for SMUD

January 23, 2013 by Jeff Shepard

Under an agreement announced today, New Power Technologies Incorporated will provide Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) an integrated transmission and distribution (T&D) modeling tool powered by New Power Technologies' Energynet® and GRIDiant Corporation's Advanced Grid Management (GRIDiant® AGM™) technologies.

The integrated T&D modeling tool will combine the high-definition grid simulation and visualization capabilities of New Power Technologies' Energynet platform with the advanced grid analytics and optimization applications of GRIDfast™ technology licensed by GRIDiant. The combined technologies represent a new class of software tools for modeling networks and producing actionable intelligence from strategic data resources contained in legacy utility systems and Smart Grid investments.

SMUD is the sixth-largest publicly-owned electric utility in the U.S., serving approximately 600,000 customers in Northern California. The utility has received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) to implement a smart grid in Sacramento that serves as a model for California and the rest of the United States.

"Our objective with the Integrated T&D Modeling Tool is to utilize the field monitoring and system modeling data available from legacy and new Smart Grid systems to provide high fidelity, quantifiable displays and analysis under specific system conditions," said SMUD Project Manager Jeff Berkheimer. "It will allow SMUD to more accurately assess, visualize, and manage current and future system impacts from electric vehicle deployments, energy storage systems, demand response programs, distributed generation, and solar PV generation within SMUD's service territory."

A portion of SMUD's ARRA funding will be used to install Distribution Automation (DA) systems, comprising intelligent switching and monitoring equipment on feeders, retrofitting of substations with new SCADA equipment, and intelligent monitoring. The funding will also be used to provide Advanced Operations Management Systems (AOS), including Conservation Voltage Reduction, Volt/VAr optimization, and Automatic Sectionalization and Restoration (ASR). SMUD also has completed installation of smart meters to all customers throughout its service area.

Peter Evans, president of New Power Technologies said, "This enterprise-class software will provide SMUD with advanced grid visibility and analytical tools that will help maximize the value of the utility's smart grid investment. It will also capitalize on its SmartSacramento partners who are participating in innovative distributed energy resource and smart grid initiatives, while enhancing grid efficiency and reliability. Our goal with GRIDiant Corporation is to provide SMUD unprecedented detail, accuracy, analytic power, and speed in simulating and displaying network conditions and analytic results in its T&D power networks."

GRIDiant CEO Andy Colman added, "A combined transmission and distribution system model, driven by GRIDfast's ability to optimize, analyze, and rank resources and customer loads on both a system-wide and a node-by-node basis, offers SMUD a powerful new analytic approach. SMUD engineers will launch analyses and view results on interactive interfaces using diverse graphic, tabular, and geospatial displays. With New Power Technologies, we expect to deliver SMUD a next-generation toolset that will offer unique engineering and utility business intelligence to complement one of the most comprehensive grid modernization programs in the world."