Electrical Industry Canada Power Quality Issue - 23

What's the difference between a nanogrid and a microgrid?
Boucher: " A nanogrid is smaller, its behind the meter. A microgrid can
be on several different buildings and you can aggregate those DERs
(Distributed Energy Resources), but we are focusing behind one meter
on the building. It could be solar energy, batteries, smart EV charging,
the control of all those loads or sources. "
Why was the partnership necessary to deliver this solution for
utilities as well as commercial, industrial, and institutional
customers?
Yague: " The value of the partnership became clear as a result of our
joint expertise - on the Awesense side, working with utilities primarily
- we saw an opportunity with our utility customers that, in order to
decarbonize their systems and maintain the reliability of power
delivery, especially for critical C&I customers, they were going to have
to take advantage of renewable nanogrids on-site. "
" Because Awesense is more specialized in the utility sphere, we saw
an opportunity where Awesense could offer the utility our software in
identifying preferential candidates for deploying nanogrids via
analyzing their data. Over the years we have become experts in energy
data. We hadn't really crossed over into the C&I space that much, we've
done some work there with industrial customers in helping them
optimize their behind-the-meter facilities and their systems, generally
on a large scale. But we didn't have the ability of what VadimUS has,
which is prescribing a nanogrid and deploying that nanogrid, and then
controlling that nanogrid. Which is a key component, here. "
" That's where it really came together, with Awesense providing, on
the utility side, the visibility into their system, identifying optimal
candidates for deploying a nanogrid that are in need of improved
reliability and resiliency. As well as the ability to track that system's
performance over time and how it impacts the overall grid system. "
" Utilities are trying to expand their revenue streams, decarbonize,
and offer grid services to ensure that C&I customers power quality isn't
effected by the inherency of renewables as they become increasingly
pronounced in the power system. "
" There are four steps: The initial step is Awesense providing its grid
ELECTRICAL INDUSTRY CANADA

visibility situational awareness and analytics into suggesting optimal
candidates. Then VadimUS comes in at that stage to help prescribe
nanogrid deployments and install the nanogrids, the renawables
on-site. The monitoring, the analytics of the systems, and the control of
those systems over time, which can be done via a DERMS solution
(Distributed Energy Resource Management System). That is a mixture
of what Awesense provides in terms of visibility and analysis and what
VadimUS provides in terms of controlling the nanogrids. "
Benefits of nanogrid adoption
Boucher: " Benefits for utilities, like Andrew said, you can expand your
new revenue streams, new grid services, you can decarbonize C&I
customers and decarbonize your distribution, you can build resiliency
with decentralization. Because we know the centralized distribution
grid is becoming more effected by natural disasters and wildfires. They
can maintain visibility into DERs (Distributed Energy Resources) growth
and impact, and they can avoid building expensive fossil fuel peaker
plants. "
" In each single nanogrid that we will install, we install a nanogrid
controller. This nanogrid controller is DERMS ready. If the utility has a
DERMS in place, it can communicate with that and enable any type of
control. "
Discussing a recent report from S&C Electric and Frost & Sullivan on
the 2020 State of C&I Power Reliability, Yague said, " essentially it found
over the previous year - from 2019 to 2020 - there was a growth in
outages for C&I customers from 20% to 40% in terms of the number of
companies effected by power outages lasting less than 5 minutes.
Which is actually a fairly significant issue, even though its less than 5
minutes, it can cost around $100,000 per outage. These outages tend to
be happening on a monthly basis, so power quality has become a
major problem for C&I customers and its being blamed on renewables,
however its not renewable's fault necessarily, it's the state of the grid.
Which just isnt prepared to deliver the power via those renewable
resources. "

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 2

23
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Electrical Industry Canada Power Quality Issue

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