ENER-i Customer Benefits

ENER-i 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 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.