An energy software company in the United States, awarded US$50 million in federal funding, says its cloud-based application can cut delays in connecting new renewable energy projects to the grid by up to a year.
“Interconnection is really where the bottleneck is,” Ashley Kelly, head of sales for GridUnity, told Power Grid International. “Our software platform streamlines that process.”
GridUnity will use the U.S. Department of Energy dollars to deploy its Interconnection Life Cycle Management software for utilities and grid operators in several states. Utilities like Hawaiian Electric, Pacific Gas & Electric, and Southern California Edison are already using it, as are two independent system operators (ISOs) that coordinate grids and energy markets across several states, reports Canary Media.
The company says its tool can cut a year off the interconnection process, which is backlogged and holds back new energy sources from connecting to the grid. It was estimated to take up to five years in 2023, an increase from the three-year wait time in 2015. That backlog is mostly caused by the challenges of determining whether a grid can handle new energy sources—to meet demand and support the transition from fossil fuels to renewables.
GridUnity’s software aims to replace the current method that grid operators and utilities use, which CEO Brian Fitzsimons describes as a “combination of spreadsheets, databases, workflow tools, and emails”—inefficient and outdated. Their tool provides generation developers with data for interconnections, and connects regional transmission organizations and ISOs with transmission owners.
“We’ve created a software platform to make sure that those two entities are able to communicate,” said Robert Sherick, who manages GridUnity’s product strategy. “To be able to pass data and documents across the platform and make sure that they’re on the same page as they go through the study and analysis that’s required to allow these generators to get interconnected safely, reliably, and securely in a timely fashion.”
The aim is to secure a generator interconnection agreement —”the approval to connect to the grid that allows a project to begin construction,” Canary Media explains.
If GridUnity’s tool is successful on a larger scale, it could help address one of the biggest obstacles to bringing renewable energy sources online to phase out fossil fuels. Other utility software platforms on the market are also meant to address the same issues, and in some cases they are being used together.
But efforts to de-clog the interconnection process will also need to be matched by upgrades to grids and transmission capacities to enable them to take on new energy generation, writes Canary Media.
