We’ve done a number of innovative projects over the past 6 years, and we love to provide our lessons learned! Browse through our projects below and let us know if you’d like to collaborate!
- TRCA Energy Management System: The Living City Campus at Kortright is an initiative of the Toronto Regional Conservation Authority (TRCA) and seeks to promote sustainability and green initiatives. Equipped with numerous PV Panels and Wind Turbines, TRCA has a renewable power capacity of over 50 kW and qualifies as a smart grid (Living City Smart Grid) . This Energy Management System performs real-time, high-speed data acquisition, monitoring, and control such that grid assets are protected and optimized.
- Distributed VoltVAR Using Internet of Things (IoT):Many solar panels have “smart” inverters that can sense when the grid is having voltage issues and supply reactive power (VAR) to regulate the voltage. But what happens when there are hundreds, or thousands of smart inverters at the grid-edge that require precise control, or they’ll do more damage to the grid than good? This project uses the IoT to solve this issue, leveraging a real-time messaging framework that allows smart inverters to harmonize their control action in a distributed way, leading to scalable, reliable, and accurate regulation of voltage. Real-world demo videos show the system in action and solving overvoltage issues at the Kortright Microgrid.
- Blockchain Energy Trading:
Did you know that peer to peer energy trading actually helps utilities? An energy marketplace, where local, green energy generation is also consumed locally, is extremely efficient, reduces peak demand, and drives down energy losses. This project leverages permissioned blockchains to facilitate energy trading between home owners, where energy transactions are transparently stored to a distributed ledger to build trust between homeowners, utilities, and other stakeholders in the energy value chain. Studies within this project show that LDCs within Ontario can save an average of $100M of CAPEX due to avoided capacity upgrades, just by deploying residential energy marketplaces!