Extending the Smart Community to build New Zealand first Dynamic Microgrid
For Paerata Rise, a lifestyle community being developed between Karaka and Pukekohe, the use of technology means the creation of a fabric for a modern social community.
Chris Johnston, Executive Director for Paerata Rise states …. “Paerata Rise is an innovative community with superior standards as shown by the quality of streets and houses within this town. Our goal is to be one of the most desirable places to live in Auckland and becoming a Smart Village is an extension of this, offering the most cutting-edge technologies.
With this aspiration to be a desirable place to live, the community needs to be efficient, sharing resources which leads to economic benefits, being energy conscious leading to a lower environmental impact, and creating sustainability.
This vision of a smart village goes far beyond an urban area that uses different types of electronic methods and sensors to collect data, which has been traditionally based on individual houses, where insights gained offline are used to manage assets, resources, and services efficiently.
Thinking differently the community of the future will be built such that logic is used to improve the operations across the entire eco-system, a dynamic real time solution to manage the functions used by the community, encompassing service management rather than supply-based utilities.
“The realities of smart villages and connected neighbourhoods are starting to emerge in the world around us, however the real ‘smarts’ need to be built into the foundations of communities which is why we are executing this project at this stage of our development,” says Johnston.
For this to work the entire environment needs to be smart, rather than a combination of smart items, a system of control, delivery, and edge compute, where functions digitally are dynamically managing what is done in the physical world.
Evolution of a Smart village, a series of firsts
In September 2020, a Smart Village Proof-of-Concept was established in collaboration with Dense Air and Ohmio, where New Zealand’s First Community based Private-LTE network was constructed using Edge Computing, local data, and connectivity for an autonomous vehicle, with the use case supporting the function of transportation to and from a Railway station.
Based on the success of this solution, the team from Overlay in conjunction with Counties Energy, Panasonic, Dell Technologies, Solace and WMAC have extended this work to build New Zealand’s first dynamic Microgrid, using IOT and Edge technology to radically change the way we look at the delivery of power.
Within the Wesley college campus, we have created a Micro Grid, which dynamically manages power supply through a distribution transformer with the real time orchestration of batteries, Solar, and real time control of function such as EV charging, hot water, and heating.
Why a Dynamic Microgrid?
The way we deliver power has been the same for over 100 years:
· Demand is calculated at the coldest day of the year
· Delivered at the demand of the customers,
· And managed on a best effort basis
But what happens if we add mass EV charging and modern homes into the mix? Can our traditional model work? Or do we end up with problems similar to August 2021?
Power outages: PM Jacinda Ardern says 'not good enough that we couldn't heat homes'
10th August 2021
According to the Electricity Authority (EA) the August 9 power outage, which saw 34,000 customers lose power during one of the coldest nights of the year, has highlighted shortcomings in grid operator Transpower's tools and processes.
The government agency charged with overseeing the sector said in its first report on the incident that the key areas of concern were "ambiguous and at times unsatisfactory communication processes" at Transpower and a "miscalculation of demand response".
As a solution, this technology changes the focus to the consumer, as a member of a community. Where energy generation, storage and consumption become manageable functions, that can be dynamically controlled to achieve tangible outcomes.
Quoting Andrew Toop, Commercial General Manager " Counties Energy is proud to have been involved in this project because it is an important trial for new technologies including batteries, LV feeder management, solar and big data at the network edge.”
With the use of the Overlay Microgrid, we have changed the way that power is perceived, presenting it as a function of a community, rather than merely supply of power.
“Overlay creates a framework, the ability to distribute logic, over an ultimately scalable network, in real time, which is vertical agnostic by nature.”
Using this community-based solution, we focus on functions which bring benefit to the entire community. Where the outcome could be:
· Peak shaving evening out loads throughout the day
· Smart management of EV charging
· Hot water control
Ultimately allowing the benefits of these outcomes to be shared.
Going forward
According to Business Wire https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211007005679/en/Global-Micro-Grids-Market-Report-2021---Rise-in-Power-Outages-Undesirable-Impact-of-Power-Outages-on-Modern-Digitalized-Enterprises-Pin-Hopes-on-Microgrids---ResearchAndMarkets.com
Global market for Micro Grids estimated at US$27 Billion in the year 2020, is projected to reach a revised size of US$46.5 Billion by 2026, growing at a CAGR of 9.3% over the analysis period.
Although this pilot is limited to a small in scale, including distributed storage, an edge-based control system, and a single transformer, we have been able to prove
· that edge-based technology can be applied to a traditional utility,
· that use of this type of idea is easily scalable and will be a viable alternative to the traditional supply model that New Zealand is currently investing in.
As an expansion of this, we are working with Solar Zero and Ara Ake to come up with a multiple trading model that will mean the expansion to the rest of the Wesley college pilot site, and then to Paerata Rise.
Overlay
Overlay creates a framework, the ability to distribute logic, over an ultimately scalable network, in real time, which is vertical agnostic by nature.
Working on the application of the framework to various use cases, we have built community-based solutions for Transport, Power, Water and security,
