Portland General Electric to pilot smart grid chip

Oregon utility Portland General Electric is to pilot Utilidata’s recently announced smart grid edge distributed AI platform.

The smart grid chip powered by NVIDIA’s Jetson platform is proposed to be installed alongside electricity meters that integrate distributed energy resources (DERs) including solar, battery storage, and electric vehicles (EVs).

With computational capability and AI, the smart grid chip is designed to collect and analyse the granular data from these devices at the edge of the grid in real time. With this, utilities should be enabled to seamlessly add more clean energy, reduce power outages, provide quicker storm recovery and ultimately lower the cost of grid operations.

The smart grid chip’s open software design also allows the utilities and their partners to develop custom applications and solutions.

Have you read?
Energy efficiency of IoT and edge devices a top research priority – AIOTI
IoT for utilities: Harnessing big data from grid’s edge

In the pilot, the smart grid chips are proposed to be installed within PGE’s smart grid test bed.

The first phase of the deployment will provide initial real-time visibility at the edge of the grid to support PGE’s decarbonisation transition.

“In Oregon, we are experiencing the impacts of climate change first-hand and recognise the urgent need for innovation at the grid edge as we transition to a clean energy future,” said Ananth Sundaram, Senior Manager of Integrated Grid at PGE.

“Investing in new technologies for the grid is a key strategy for PGE to achieve its climate goals and provide customers with clean, affordable, and resilient energy.”

PGE serves over 900,000 customers and has ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets, including an 80% reduction in baseline emissions from power served to retail customers. To meet these targets, PGE aims to source 25% of its peak load from DERs at the edge of the grid such as residential rooftop solar and batteries.

The smart grid chip should enable PGE to better leverage these DERs to meet its goals.

PGE’s smart grid test bed is a community-based initiative to manage energy use and demand. It spans three neighbourhoods with over 20,000 participating customers who are incentivised to use smart home technologies, such as thermostats, water heaters, EV chargers, and batteries to gain better control over their energy use and carbon footprint while helping PGE operate the grid more efficiently.