January 5, 2010 – EDSA announced Paladin SmartGrid software platform, which removes a major obstacle to the widespread use of alternative energy. Paladin SmartGrid is a “master controller” enabling the use of on-premise and distributed energy sources – such as solar, wind, or local co-generation – without jeopardizing the reliability of the legacy utility grid. Paladin SmartGrid optimizes energy consumption on site employing multiple energy sources, whether they are focused on a single objective – such as minimizing annual energy cost, carbon footprint, peak load, or public utility consumption – or a combination of objectives that vary by time, costs, energy source reliability, etc.
As organizations increasingly seek to supplement their utility power with on-premise power generation, Paladin SmartGrid:
- Serves as a master controller for intelligent microgrid designs, monitoring and electricity trading (i.e., selling power back into the public grid)
- Monitors the microgrid’s power quality, utilization and capacity in real-time, in order to offer excess capacity to the Smart Grid
- Monitors all transactions between public electric service and microgrid infrastructure
- Maintains rate and pricing information for management of private-public exchangeFor example, if a facility were to install on-premise solar panels, wind turbines, or co-generation capabilities, and use those sources to charge large on-site battery storage – while attempting to use public utility power as sparingly as possible – it becomes increasingly difficult to ensure power system reliability.
Since inherently episodic energy sources may be unavailable when needed, a real-time balancing act is essential to ensure energy savings and environmental goals are met, while at the same time, guaranteeing that local-loop-wide power systems reliability is never jeopardized.
Paladin SmartGrid monitors and enables management of the dynamic nature and inherently lower power quality of alternative energy sources, to meet both energy management goals, and the high levels of availability and reliability.
Paladin SmartGrid remembers the business and operational goals of a facility – e.g., only use utility power during off-peak hours, except when system reliability falls below 99.99% – and is continually diagnosing system performance in real-time while making intelligent predictions about how to seamlessly transition from one energy source to another.
