Solutions for Smart Grid and Renewable Energy

Intertek has solutions to help utilities across the world embrace Smart Grid and integrate Renewable Energy into their systems.

We are at the forefront of helping utilities with high renewable penetration better understand the economic and engineering challenges that they face and help them build pragmatic solutions around demand response and portfolio optimization in the Smart Grid energy environment.

The Smart Grid is incomplete unless “Delivery Management” and “Demand Management” are integrated with “Asset Optimization” which is more and more important given the increased “Renewable Integration”. Intertek provides tools to Utilities to get proactive about equipment maintenance, realizing both current and future maintenance and capital expenses, as well as optimizing a utility portfolio with high penetration of renewables.

We bring technical expertise and innovative solutions to accommodate existing power generating infrastructure with newer generation as well as utilizing tools such as Demand Response, to achieve greater efficiency and lower costs. 

New Challenges – Variability and Uncertainty

While current requirements for ancillary power are adding variability in power plant generation, the introduction of wind and solar have exacerbated this variability, resulting in increased cycling at power plants. This increased cycling is adding several millions of dollars in future maintenance cost related to “cycling”, as well as increasing the need to accurately optimize the renewables integrated fleet of power plants that includes this high “cycling cost”. Renewable resources are likely to introduce greater load following and ancillary service requirements and utilities need to examine the fixed and variable cycling costs, and best utilize tools, such as demand response, in order to be able to respond to minute by minute variations in power generation. These issues are driving Intertek’s “cycling” related power plant business.

A Possible Solution – Demand Response

Renewable Integration and particularly wind integration is traditionally a “cost” issue and is less of a “reliability” issue. In addition to managing the inherent variability of these resources with traditional fossil or storage units, it is important to realize the expected benefits of using Demand Response as a fast, economical, and reliable resource.

Solar and Wind are also introducing new demand peaks. Along with the peak power needs in the middle of the day, it is likely that with higher solar penetration two new shoulder peaks, one at the beginning and the other at the end of the day are more or less certain. These new peaks not only bring challenges in terms of meeting capacity but also bring a case of very high ramping needs. We believe that with a better understanding of these ramping costs and using demand response to mitigate the effects of both additional ramping and the additional capacity requirements, utilities can find efficient and economic solutions to best operate their fleets.

Intertek’s proprietary unit commitment model - Cycling Adviser^TM is capable of optimizing dispatch at very small time intervals (minute by minute) and utilizing the presence of Demand Response to economically dispatch the fleet. Our consulting services provide both to regulators and utilities, solutions that give them a comprehensive view of the benefits of new technology and the possible pit falls of not accurately accounting for the new challenges these technologies bring.

We have been analyzing these costs since 1989 and have examined cycling costs at over 400 power plants in the USA, Canada, Australia, and Europe in all types of power plants. Intertek has major studies underway to determine cycling costs for utilities with high renewable portfolios as well as determining economic value of traditional renewables such as hydro power to utilities with varying loads. Our work is being used in rate cases to recover these costs in Colorado, Florida, Texas (ERCOT), and Minnesota, as well as in power purchase and sales contracts throughout the world.

Contact us to see how Intertek can help your organization with Solutions for Smart Grid and Renewable Energy.