As part of a Department of Energy Smart Grid Demonstration Project, Alstom has been awarded a contract to deliver Demand Response Management System (DRMS) to Con Edison. Con Edison provides electric service to 3.3 million customers in New York City and Westchester County, New York. Alstom’s DRMS, based on its e-terraDRBizNet 3.0 technology, will allow Con Edison to efficiently use consumer loads to manage energy supply and demand, with incentives offered to electricity customers to reduce consumption during periods of peak distribution system demand – such as hot summer days, or to alleviate stress on the distribution system. This demand response management system optimizes existing energy available and paves the way to a reliable grid.
In 2013, with more than 8,300,000 square feet of office space under construction, New York City was one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. Con Edison has 94,000 miles of underground electric cables, plus another 34,000 miles of overhead wires to serve its customers. As utilities strive to minimize the ongoing extension of infrastructure and optimize existing assets, Alstom’s e-terraDRBizNet 3.0 provides the digital intelligence to make fast decisions to compensate energy flow.
Alstom’s DRMS is a system that integrates residential, commercial and industrial Demand Response programs and device technologies; it can be used from small pilot deployments, such as handling new, initial automated demand response programs, to large industrial-grade DRMS needs, such as efficiently calling on a large complex portfolio of energy resources to address surging demand. The DRMS forecasts available load curtailment capacity. In some utility installations it has been deployed with the capability to send signals for automatic load control to aggregators or directly to devices such as air conditioners or water heaters, thus optimizing the use of electricity. It then calculates customers’ normal electricity usage as a baseline, and then compares actual reduced usage to measure performance.
