FEATURE ENERGY MANAGEMENT
Virtual power plants - the future of UK energy?
Renewable energy specialist Solo Energy deploys and operates distributed energy storage systems, in the form of home batteries and ‘Vehicle-to-Grid’ (V2G) electric vehicle chargers, at any home or business in the UK that wishes to host one
I
n order for the energy to be stored and shared securely, Solo needed to find a
control platform capable of remotely communicating with and controlling the batteries and chargers, as well as enabling vast amounts of data to be recorded and securely stored. The platform needed to allow Solo to control and remotely communicate with all its distributed assets both individually and as a collective unit, enabling energy to be shared between them quickly and efficiently. It also needed to provide visualisation
tools capable of enabling Solo to visualise and analyse all its energy data so that it could identify trends and improve performance of the VPP, and present this information back to its customers as a simple, user-friendly interface. In order to allow Solo’s software to grow along with the business, the virtualisation software also needed to be fully scalable. With data security of paramount
importance, Solo also needed to find the most secure environment in which to host the control platform - one which required zero IT infrastructure in order to deliver a cost-effective option, and which could be quickly setup, deliver 24-hour monitoring and comprehensive customer support, and guarantee uptime.
THE SOLUTION Daniel Dransfield, VP of engineering at
14 AUGUST 2019 | IRISH MANUFACTURING
Solo Energy, said: “We needed a control platform that we could deploy quickly, that would remove the need for secondary Open Platform Communications (OPC) software, offer object-based deployment to make scaling more efficient, allow for quick development of visualisation clients for the VPP, and deliver excellent data storage and reporting capabilities. It was also important for us that our platform provider be able to deliver comprehensive customer support, particularly while the project was in its infancy.” As a result, in 2017, Solo contacted
industrial IT solutions provider SolutionsPT for a recommendation. SolutionsPT’s Wonderware product manager, Andrew Graham, identified Wonderware System Platform 2017 as the software most suitable for Solo’s needs. He said: “System Platform 2017 is
essentially an operating system for industrial applications – a responsive control solution for SCADA, manufacturing execution systems (MES) and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). It provides configuration, deployment, communication, security, data connectivity and people collaboration, bringing essential context to organisations’ data, greatly assisting with diagnostics and troubleshooting, and providing valuable system documentation
Solo needed to find a control platform capable of remotely communicating with and controlling the batteries and chargers, as well as enabling vast amounts of data to be recorded and securely stored
throughout the system lifecycle – everything Solo was looking for. “It also includes the first ever fully
responsive Operations Management Interface (OMI). This provides improved situational awareness and an intuitive experience through its modern user interface (UI) that enables users to bring together information from all relevant systems and give it real context, enabling them to understand current performance and accurately predict future behaviour. “Additionally, System Platform allows
screen resolution-independent asset templates to be digitally modelled and shared on any device. This allows Solo to receive insights from its operations anywhere in the world and keep development and maintenance costs minimal. Crucially, it also enables application scaling from a single node to hundreds of nodes without the need to redesign the entire application. Using drag and drop technology, assets can be easily deployed onto other machines, allowing users to scale up from a single box solution to multi-tier deployment and in keeping with the needs of the business, as well as the technology supporting it, offering a future-proof investment.” As an organisation unrestricted by the
safety or latency concerns that would make an on-premise solution necessary, Solo made the decision to host System Platform in a cloud environment. By doing so, it eliminated the need for additional IT infrastructure and delivered a fully scalable and easily deployable system that could be installed with minimal resource. To assist in the adoption of the
technology, SolutionsPT also provided Wonderware System Platform training and certification to Solo. Throughout the trial and set-up of the solution, full technical support was provided, meaning any queries could be dealt with promptly. Dransfield said: “We’re delighted with
the new control platform, and glad that we took the decision to host it in a secure cloud environment. The wide range of solutions the platform offers has been invaluable as it’s essentially an ‘everything under one roof’ product. Had we opted for a different platform, we’d have needed to employ additional services from other third-party companies, which would have increased operating costs significantly. “We’re now in a position to begin
rolling out our service commercially across the UK and Ireland and that’s not something that would have been possible without the new control platform.”
Solutions PT
www.solutionspt.com T: +44 (0) 1614 954 600
/ IRISHMANUFACTURING
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