GE Multilin, a key part of GE’s international empire headquartered in Markham, Ontario, is where GE’s products are developed to enhance the functionality of the electric grid. The company works with Ontario Centres of Excellence, Hydro One and several of Ontario’s universities. Some of its current and recent offerings in smart grid technology include:
• Microgrid control, for systems isolated from the main grid, and for places like industrial parks that form their own self-contained grid within the larger system. This includes storage, for example of hydrogen. GE is developing a control system with intelligent algorithms that will continuously read a number of conditions – the availability of generation resources, economics of power price and fuel cost, for example, and allow optimal dispatch, plus dynamic load shedding for stability, and will also operate the tie-line control system
• Another key device in production at GE Multilin is for wide area protection and control. The company is developing advanced applications that measure synchrophasors – electrical waves on a power grid – and use those measurements to more quickly sense potential trouble on a regional grid and provide faster and finer response; for example, shutting down an inter-tie when the line on the other side is about to fail. Availability of such capacity in 2003, for example, could have sensed the fault on the AEP line that precipitated the blackout and closed it off before it brought down other parts of the grid. It senses and locates the originating effect, using the parallel high-speed optical fibre network and allows prompt action.
• GE has new technology to help deal with the increasing number of generators that cause power on distribution lines to flow in the opposite direction from what has been normal. The company is working closely with Hydro One to add new functionality to traditional substation re-closers: systems that sense faults on the circuit, close lines down, and reconnect them when the fault has passed. With the increasing number of energy sources on the distribution system, this becomes increasingly complex, and improved algorithms are needed. GE has designed a windfarm-connected distributed generation controller that is also wirelessly connected to the distribution breaker at the substation. In case of a fault, this allows very high-speed isolation of the windfarm in the case of a fault. Advanced re-closers have communication and other abilities, allowing them to reconfigure the distribution system on the fly.
Hydro One is one of leading utilities in North America, says GE Multilin’s General Manager Juane Macias, and the collaboration is a fruitful one. GE Multilin exports about 60% of what they make in Markham to the United States, he says, adding hundreds of millions of dollars to Ontario’s trade balance.
Being located in the Town of Markham gives GE Multilin easy access to a cluster of technology companies who have chosen to operate in the same area. With over 800 high-technology companies in the vicinity, Markham describes itself as “Canada’s High-Tech Capital”. IBM, Apple Computers, Lucent Technologies, Sun Microsystems, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, ATI Technologies, Motorola, and Philips Electronics operate in Markham. The Town is also known for having instigated far-sighted energy projects: the Town owns Markham District Energy, a local cogeneration facility, and has a market driven energy efficiency program (See “Markham enters the competitive energy market ,” IPPSO FACTO, February 2008). In June 2010, Markham will be releasing its “Greenprint,” a wide-ranging sustainability strategy.
For other articles in this feature, see the following related stories:
• Ontario research companies taking on the world
• Feature interview with Tom Corr, the new President of OCE
• Ontario Centres of Excellence - ready to respond
• Ontario’s burgeoning research infrastructure
• Stories on the MaRS centre , Making the grid even smarter and biomass work at Atikokan
• How to get more value out of a transmission line / Pushing the limits of what the grid can carry