Smarter Grid Solutions software delivers demand side response with European commercial and industrial customers.

Smarter Grid Solutions (SGS) has successfully completed a 3-year project with ten industrial partners including Laing O’Rourke, Goimek/Danobat, and Alstom. The project focused on Demand Side Response (DSR) in the manufacturing and production sectors with DSR capability being enabled in two European factory demonstration sites.

SGS’ leading Distributed Energy Resource Management System (DERMS) platform, ANM Strata, was deployed behind-the-meter at two European factories, along with energy metering, to monitor and provide visibility of energy consumption. Each production line was monitored, providing consumption patterns and trends that were used to determine where energy consumption could be shifted to times when energy costs were lower and to deliver other DSR services. The merging of the front-of-meter grid DERMS technology with behind-the-meter Commercial and Industrial (C&I) energy management provides a game-changing, forward-looking, extensible energy management platform in the industrial sector.

At the Laing O’Rourke UK demonstrator site different DSR programs were investigated, with ANM Strata enabling flexibility service delivery and market participation as well as a platform to manage planned Distributed Energy Resources (DER) assets. The outcomes of this project pave the way to more sophisticated grid and market integration, increased network flexibility in the commercial and industrial sector, and promoting sustainability and energy efficiency in production.

Dr Graham Ault, Executive Director at Smarter Grid Solutions said, “This innovative project demonstrated the importance of DSR in all its forms for C&I customers. Harnessing customer, behind-the-meter flexibility for on-site energy management as well as system and energy market operation is a crucial part of the energy transition. Readying C&I customers for DER integration and optimisation creates the platform to deliver additional financial, operational and sustainability objectives”.

This landmark project has created exploitable outcomes on C&I energy management, combined DER management and DSR capabilities behind-the-meter, contributing to the smart, flexible energy system and the DSO vision in the UK and Europe, whilst supporting SGS business with its customers and partners.

Dr Graham Herries, overall OPTIMISED project coordinator from Laing O’Rourke said, “This project has shown the important role industrial energy users can play in the changing energy landscape. Utilising SGS products to manage and optimise our energy consuming processes has highlighted future savings we can make across our operations and the value of future DER and DSR developments.”

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 680515.