Gridquant - New Math For The Smart Grid - Greentech Media

Gridquant: New Math for the Smart Grid : Greentech Media
1 de 4
http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/gridquant-new-math-for-th...
ART IC LE S: G RID E DG E
PREVIOUS ARTICLE
A123's Chinese
Bailout Deal Draws...
NEXT ARTICLE
The Soft Grid: 10

Trends to Watch
Gridquant: New Math for the

Smart Grid
The company
with its patented
Holomorphic
Embedding
Load-Flow
Method for
modeling power
systems gets
investment, partnership with Battelle.
Jeff St. John
August 14, 2012
The math being used to solve the electricity grids most complex
power flow equations today is, well, kind of fuzzy.
Gridquant, a startup created by Spanish software development firm
Grupo AIA, says its new math for power flow modeling can make
those grid calculations far more accurate. While the company was
only recently incorporated in the United States, versions of its
Holomorphic Embedding Load-Flow Method (HELM) modeling have
been put into action at grid operations centers by Spanish utility
Endesa and Mexicos Comisin Federal de Electricidad since the
1990s, as well as since 2002 at California utility Pacific Gas & Electric
(PDF).
Last month, Gridquant announced that research heavyweight Battelle
has joined as a new partner to bring its HELM technology to a wider
audience. Battelle invested an undisclosed amount in the Savannah,
Ga.-based company, and will take its technology to market as
21/04/2015 21:30
2 de 4
exclusive provider of consulting services for utilities wanting to

implement the technology via end-use licenses.
The idea is that Battelle, the Columbus, Ohio-based group that helps
run $6.5 billion in annual research and development budgets for
customers including Department of Energy laboratories, can help
utilities wrap their heads around building an unfamiliar and extremely
complex form of mathematics into their grid operations.
This software is a game-changer, is how Bob Stuart, the former
PG&E operations engineering manager who led the deployment of the
technology at the utility in 2002, put it. It does something totally
different from Newton-Raphson, which has been around for a long
time, but does not solve the problems you need it to solve.
Stuart, who now works for Gridquant, is referring to the NewtonRaphson method, named after mathematical genius Sir Isaac Newton
and his less well-known contemporary Joseph Raphson. For the past
100 years or so, these mathematical techniques have been used by
energy management systems (EMS) to calculate power flows in the
DON'T MISS ANY GTM INSIGHTS!
worlds grid operations centers.
Sign up for the GTM newsletter and get
our articles delivered to you.
But Newton-Raphson does so using approximations, and can yield

false conclusions, especially when the data coming into the system is
rapidly changing, Stuart said in an interview last week. Thats a
problem, because those moments of rapid change also happen to be
Industry
the moments of highest grid stress and danger. That means, ironically,
that the flaws of the Newton-Raphson method make it least useful
when the need for it to be accurate is at its most critical, he said.
See full subscription options
Privacy Policy
Gridquants math, developed by physicist

and
Don't show
thisGrupo
message AIA co-founder
Antoni Trias-Bonet, takes a completely different approach, one that
Don't like email? Follow us on social media instead!
Stuart described as deterministic in approach. Instead of
approximations that get less reliable as complications increase, HELM
yields a verifiable result based on incoming data thats constantly
being built into the model, he said.
As Ross Harding, Gridquants CEO, put it, This software shows you
exactly where you are, where you want to go, and how to get there.
The software can integrate with existing EMS systems, which means it
can incorporate existing grid sensors, such as synchrophasors that
take millisecond readings of transmission system power quality.
Sensors like these are seen as a critical first step toward giving grid
21/04/2015 21:30
3 de 4
operators the visibility to foresee the kind of unpredictable cascading

fault effects that lead to system-wide outages like those that struck
the U.S. Northeast and Canada in 2003, or blacked out San Diegos
grid last year, or cut power across two-thirds of India last week.
But as Jason Black, grid systems research leader at Battelle, noted,
One thing synchrophasors cant do is tell you what will happen if a
line goes down, or makes a change. Gridquants system can build on
the synchrophasor data to provide grid operators a list of actions they
can take to help bring the synchrophasor-detected grid anomalies
back into a safe range of operations, he said.
While todays EMS systems also strive to deliver that kind of analysis
and insight to grid operators, using Gridquants mathematical models
may find problems on the grid that may not be seen by existing EMS,
Black said. Theyre even more useful in managing situations where the
Newton-Raphson method yields even fuzzier and less reliable results,
such as so-called N-minus-1 contingency planning, or figuring out
how a grid will operate as generation and transmission assets are
added or dropped from the mix.
Sign up for the GTM newsletter and get
Stuart sees several roles for Gridquant to play in todays power grids,
based on how he saw the same math used at PG&E:
- First, it can be used to allow the grid to operate more reliably on the
margins of safety, by more accurately modeling just how much power
Industry
is actually flowing through transmission lines and substations.
- Second, it can be used for the daily 'whats happening tomorrow'
See full subscription options
briefings in which grid engineers plan
for a whole host of
Privacy Policy
contingencies that may arise duringDon't
the show
course
of a day of operations,
this message
he said.
Don't like email? Follow us on social media instead!
- Third, it can be used to restore the grid once its gone down, he said.
So-called 'black-start' operations are complex, with grid operators
trying to orchestrate the restarting of multiple generation plants and
the reconnecting of loads in a balanced manner.
Beyond plugging into these existing grid operations needs, Stuart sees
a growing need for technologies like Gridquants to solve the new
problems emerging with the growth of intermittent wind and solar
power on the grid, the spread of plug-in vehicles, and other
grid-disrupting technologies.
21/04/2015 21:30
4 de 4
The grid today, with whats going on with growth, with renewables, is
being turned upside down, he said. Ive been at control centers all
over where the operators dont have that comfort of knowing exactly
where theyre at.
Neither Gridquant nor Battelle would discuss details of the companys
funding or plans for future developments of the technology, though
Harding said that the company was in the process of seeking
additional funding.
The two companies will also have to overcome a certain uncertainty
in the utility industry over such a novel approach to an age-old way of
managing power calculations, Black said.
There is absolutely an acceptance curve. The math is totally new, he
said. Still, Battelle did its due diligence on the existing deployments in
Spain, Mexico and California, and found examples where the utilities
involved described real-world benefits of using the new math to catch
grid anomalies or inefficiencies that traditional EMS platforms didnt,
he said.
Sign up for the GTM newsletter an d

Sign
uprfor
newsletter
get
getwant
ou
articles
elivered
to and
youto
.
Thats important, because utilities will
to the
findGTM
adset
of benefits
outweigh the costs of deploying Gridquants

technology. Harding said
Email Address
that could range from $50,000 or so for a simple, off-line analysis tool
Company Name
that doesnt actually link up to the grid, to several millions dollars for
Industry
installation on a full operational basis.
Industry
Of course, the benefits of avoiding the massive blackouts could be
See full subscription
options
included in that calculation. As Gridquants
novel math
is put into
Privacy
See
full subscription
Policy
options
place at more utilities, it will have more chances to prove whether or
Don't show
Privacy
Policythis message
not it can actually give operators theDon't
tools
showto
thisprevent
message blackouts they
Don't
like
email?
Follow us on social media
otherwise wouldnt have seen coming.
instead!
Don't
like email? Follow us on social media instead!
TAGS: battelle, blackout, demand response, doe, endesa, grid optimization,

gridquant, ibm, pg&e, renewables, smart grid, transmission, utilities, vc
21/04/2015 21:30

Gridquant - New Math For The Smart Grid - Greentech Media

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Gridquant - New Math For The Smart Grid - Greentech Media

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Gridquant: New Math for the Smart Grid : Greentech Media

The Soft Grid: 10