In Norfolk County, located along the northern coast line of Lake Erie, an additional 18 megawatts of renewable energy are about to come online. The power will be generated by two solar PV plants named Norfolk I & II, the latest SunEdison projects to be activated in Ontario. But there is further value being created: Energy production from the solar systems will be closely monitored, ensuring maximum production for the company’s investors, and Ontario consumers, thanks to the latest smart grid technology.
“When I joined SunEdison five years ago, it wasn’t possible to get immediate energy and power reads off our systems,” said Mark Culpepper, Chief Technology Officer and Acting General Manager at SunEdison. “Today we have over 400 active plants around the world. As we have expanded our number of plants, making sure production is ‘on plan’ has been critical to our success.”
Increasingly, the monitoring of solar production for internal shareholders isn’t the only requirement for a robust energy management system. With a growing amount of variable power generation being added to the system, and with an increased number of “non-market participants” now supplying energy, the Independent Electricity System Operator is looking for the ability to monitor a greater range of activity on the grid (visibility). Smart grid technology can be extremely helpful in developing options for changes in regulations to add this kind of visibility.
Currently, the IESO is normally able to monitor activity at the transmission level only. The limited ability to see or predict the contribution from solar generation facilities connected to the distribution system means that the IESO has difficulty accurately forecasting the demand from loads and local electricity utilities. This uncertainty impacts the dispatch schedule of other generating facilities since the output from the distribution connected renewable power projects varies continually.
To help solve these challenges the IESO has instituted a “Visibility Technical Working Group” designed to help address the issues related to the increase in distributed and variable generation.
Recommendations for market rule changes from the Working Group will impact solar and wind projects greater than or equal to 5 MW in three significant ways:
1) Projects that are connected to the distribution system will be required to “register” with the IESO
2) At the time of registration, these projects will be required to submit plant-specific “static data” to the IESO
3) On an on-going basis, the projects will be required to submit plant-specific “dynamic data” to the IESO, such as meteorological information as well as generation output.
This data will be collected and used by the IESO in their forecasting models.
But what does this mean on a tactical level for solar farms? For SunEdison, as each of the company’s solar plants become activated, they are already being equipped with a device called SunEdison Energy and Environmental Data System or SEEDS™, which enables energy production monitoring. The SEEDS device collects and transmits system performance data from each SunEdison location in 15-minute intervals, and sends it to one of the company’s three global operations centers, where analysts measure and verify the performance of all SunEdison systems.
Beyond the standard metrics on energy, power, voltage and current, the company collects signature level information at the meter, inverter and panel level. Information such as wind speed, temperature, ambient and panel irradiance are collected to enable monitoring and control of remote and distributed locations. This puts the company in good standing for the new IESO requirements that will require each facility to have two meteorological data collection points capable of transmitting dynamic data every 30 seconds.
“If you’re not prepared to invest in smart grid infrastructure, you shouldn’t be in the solar business,” said Culpepper. “Three years after our first implementation of the technology, not only is it critical to ensuring proper cash flow and access to capital, but over the long term it’s the only way to scale an organization. More and more, becoming a profitable distributed power producer is just not possible with conventional technology.”
Smart grid technology is used by SunEdison to optimize generator operation. For example, it is used to detect and diagnose outages, and reduce their duration, identify under-performance, and dispatch technicians and field staff to solve any issues. The data is also used to conduct soiling analysis to help determine when it is economic to dispatch crews to clear the panels if needed.
Although the term ‘smart grid’ is widely used, many of today’s real world applications are focused on system awareness – knowing when a part of the grid is down or in need of repair. For example, SunEdison’s monitoring devices will send information from their new Norfolk solar farms to their Renewable Operations Centers, which manage the company’s diverse portfolio of system configurations, sizes and technologies. These operations centers help the company with tasks like the above.
For SunEdison, this strategy seems to be working. Over the past several years of operation, the company has produced at an average of 104% of their expected solar energy performance capacity. And performance is important when it’s directly tied to your company’s profitability.
According to Culpepper, the road ahead includes smart grid technology that will improve the company’s ability to monitor system performance and respond to changing grid conditions This will not only impact the maintenance aspects of remotely operating solar systems around the globe, but will enable easier and more effective interaction with local agencies like the IESO. The SunEdison systems are already designed to provide grid operators with visibility into the solar assets through standard industry protocols. Solar power plant integration with the LDCs has already been adopted by leveraging knowledge transfer with existing SCADA systems. “Ultimately, by providing the LDC access to a pool of power plants acting as one virtual resource, we are providing them with a level of visibility and control that they don’t currently have today.”
The future of smart grid technology will enable organizations to benefit from autonomy, systemic financial transparency, and improved safety and security. The use of smart inverters that respond to changing grid conditions is core to the strategy SunEdison is actively pursuing. While the technology is already proven, they are undergoing rigorous testing for reasons of both safety and security.
With the general industry trend moving toward distributed generation, smart grid technology and implementation is poised to play an increasingly vital role. “The future of distributed generation and of micro grid systems is really dependent on smart grid technology,” said Culpepper.
In the interim, SunEdison Norfolk I and II sites are expected to start producing more than 19 million KWh in the first year of operation and almost 400 million kWh in total over their 20 year term. This means the solar parks will generate enough electricity to power 33,000 homes in Norfolk County.