Premier Alliance Group Inc., a strategic advisory, services and solutions firm, has announced that its Energy and Sustainability division has been selected by AutoGrid Systems, a developer of advanced analytics software for the energy industry, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to provide engineering support for a California Energy Commission (CEC)-awarded grant to demonstrate a system for demand response optimization and management at two large industrial sites throughout California. The grant was awarded to AutoGrid and Berkeley Lab in conjunction with University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University.
According to the companies, the project will demonstrate how two Sunnyvale, Calif.-based industrial facilities are well positioned to benefit from AutoGrid's Demand Response Optimization and Management System (DROMS), a cloud-based demand management service that employs big data analytics, a physics-based model of the grid and information streams from smart meters and other grid assets to predict electricity demand.
In addition, the project will demonstrate how such facilities can participate in not only the traditional DR programs targeted at reducing the peak demand, but also the new and emerging DR programs designed to provide fast- responding ancillary services to the grid to support large-scale integration of renewable generation, the companies add.
"The successful completion of this project has far-reaching implications," says Dave Watson, program manager at Berkeley Lab. "Not only will it provide much-needed jobs and revenue within the state of California, but it will also introduce an innovative technology that will drastically reduce the cost of real-time demand response management and pave the way for smoothly integrating distributed generation capacity into the grid."
