Aggregate Industries first to use Open Energi’s new AI demand response platform

0

Aggregate Industries will be the first company to use Open Energi’s new automated demand-side response platform. The aggregator claims it uses artificial intelligence (AI) to optimise assets and extract maximum value from flexible use of energy.

One of Open Energi’s founder clients, Aggregate Industries will use the new platform in conjunction with its energy supplier Ørsted (formerly Dong Energy). Ørsted also benefits by reducing imbalance costs, having pushed demand-side response as a means of using customer flexibility to control its own costs in recent years.

Open Energi says its ‘Dynamic Demand 2.0’ platform makes smarter decisions based on more granular asset and markets data. It claims customers benefit from optimised stacking of revenue streams, including balancing services, energy trading, the capacity market, peak price management, constraint management and operational energy efficiencies.

As demand-side response value migrates from contracted revenue streams to more merchant models, accessing all of the available revenue streams at the right time will determine which aggregators and their customers make money.

Open Energi said the software can also be used to control aggregated battery assets and the firm is “advancing discussions” with battery storage and EV charging companies in a bid to pursue a licensing model for its platform, as some other aggregators are now doing.

“It is now possible to measure and monitor machine behaviour at such a granular level that we can identify invisible flexibility in the way we consume power,” said David Hill, commercial director at Open Energi.

“Many industrial processes – such as pumping, heating and cooling – have inherent energy storage, and when you combine these with on-site generation, battery storage and EV charging it is possible to take sites off-grid for periods of the day with no impact on business operations. This is incredibly empowering for consumers, but identifying which asset to switch or dispatch and in which order to reduce costs and carbon is a very complex and dynamic problem to solve.”

Hill claimed that the firm’s new platform “puts within reach a 100% renewable energy system, balanced by real-time demand flexibility, where the cost of that input is data alone. You begin to see a future which has a very low cost of operation and a future in which consumers are in control of how they use energy”.

Interested in demand-side response? Download The Energyst’s 2017 DSR report here. You can also download our new Battery Storage report here.

Related stories:

Open Energi wins Severn Trent DSR tender

Open Energi and Camborne Energy Storage take Tesla battery into frequency response 

Open Energi strikes deal with controls firm to unlock 8MW of university DSR

Open Energi and Forum for the Future urge firms to join DSR ‘movement’

Open Energi signs 2MW DSR deal with construction firm Hanson

Government to consult on DSR in spring, aggregator Open Energi signs big deal

Click here to see if you qualify for a free subscription to the print magazine, or to renew.

Follow us at @EnergystMedia. For regular bulletins, sign up for the free newsletter.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here