Enbala Helps American Water Increase Efficiency
Vancouver, BRITISH COLUMBIA (PRWEB) August 17, 2015 -- Enbala Power Networks has been engaged by Pennsylvania American Water to further develop an innovative program that increases energy efficiency and reduces energy costs. Pennsylvania American Water is increasing its use of the Enbala platform to broaden its participation in PJM Interconnection’s Regulation Services Market (RSM).
The water utility had previously used the Enbala platform to enable loads at its Shire Oaks pump station to participate in the electric system operator’s RSM. This new expansion added an additional pump into the program. In addition, two pumping stations, one in Pennsylvania and one in New Jersey, were brought onto the platform, thus creating additional energy efficiencies and savings through the RSM program, while also supporting the electric system operator’s grid-balancing efforts.
Energy bills, as a percentage of operating costs for drinking water systems, can typically reach as high as 40 percent, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. American Water’s Shire Oaks Pump Station was using an average of 1,200,000 kilowatt hours per month with a peak demand of 1,900 kilowatts when it initiated this novel approach to demand response management.
With just one drinking water pump enabled in the program at its Shire Oaks station, American Water had the potential to shave 1 percent off the site’s total energy bill. By enabling a second drinking water pump, American Water has doubled its capabilities at Shire Oaks and, through the Enbala platform, upgraded other sites to triple its ability to participate in the grid operator’s regulation services market, which increases efficiency and benefits customers.
“The Enbala platform is exactly the kind of technology we look to leverage,” said Paul Gagliardo, innovation development manager for American Water. “It’s a green solution that gives us greater energy efficiency and cost savings, which helps keep rates reasonable for our customers. It’s also a way to be a good corporate citizen because, with this program, we can help PJM keep the electric grid in balance.”
“American Water was a pioneer in this type of energy market participation,” said Arthur (Bud) Vos, President and CEO of Enbala Power Networks. “The results seen at this utility prove that water providers have enormous potential to help grid operators maintain balance in our increasingly complex electric system.”
The Enbala platform provides regulation service to grid operators like PJM Interconnection through a combination of software and operational technology that dispatches loads from a network of electricity customers and aggregates them to function as distributed energy resource for the grid operator. PJM sends Enbala a continuous signal indicating how much response is needed from the demand side to maintain a balanced grid. The Enbala platform fulfills that request by identifying which of the participating facilities are available and then sending out a signal to adjust power usage at sites like American Water’s pumping stations. Because the load control conforms to customer-defined constraints, the system is non-disruptive to the customer’s site or operations.
About ENBALA Power Networks®
Enbala Power Networks is focused on making the world’s power grids greener and more reliable, efficient and predictable by harnessing the power of distributed energy. We are doing this with a transformative real-time energy-balancing platform that is changing the utility landscape.
The Enbala platform provides a revolutionary, highly flexible approach for creating controllable and dispatchable energy resources. It unobtrusively captures and aggregates available commercial and industrial (C&I) process loads, energy storage and renewable energy sources to form a network of continuously controlled resources. It then dynamically optimizes and dispatches these energy resources to respond to the real-time needs of the power system – all without impacting C&I customer operations.
For more information, visit Enbala.com or follow us on Twitter.com/Enbala.
Ginger Juhl, JUHL COMMUNICATIONS, +1 303-955-4771, [email protected]
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