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What can The Texas Institute accomplish with smart grid technology?
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Energy Internet
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Reducing Waste
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Integrating Renewables
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Minimizing Impact of Outage
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The smart grid integrates information and communications technology with our current electrical infrastructure, empowering smarter energy choices.
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With smarter grid, power delivery can be made more efficient and less wasteful.
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Smart Grid technologies enable two-way power flow to help bring wind, solar and other renewable energy solutions safely to market.
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The grid can be reconfigured to isolate outages, and immediately direct crews to restore power. Thanks to smart grid monitoring and control.
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Consumer Energy Management
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Enabling Electric Vehicles
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Advanced Meters and Controls
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Professional Services
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The option to determine when you use energy based on variable pricing levels will save you money.
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The introduction of smart grid technologies could help these clearer, more cost-effective flourish.
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Advanced meters allow the integration of info from multi energy related sources into one software kit for management and efficiency We deliver solutions to energy management, analysis, load management and response problems.
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We deliver solutions to energy management, analysis, load management and response problems.
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For most of the last century, our electric grids were a symbol of progress. The inexpensive, abundant power they brought changed the way the world worked—filling homes, streets, businesses, towns and cities with energy.
But today's electrical grids reflect a time when energy was cheap, their impact on the natural environment wasn't a priority and consumers weren't even part of the equation. Back then, the power system could be centralized, closely managed and supplied by a relatively 12pt number of large power plants. It was designed to distribute power in one direction only—not to manage a dynamic global network of energy supply and demand.
As a result of inefficiencies in this system, the world's creation and distribution of electric power is wasteful. With little or no intelligence to balance loads or monitor power flows, enough electricity is lost annually to power India, Germany and Canada for an entire year. If the U.S. grid alone were just 5% more efficient, it would be like permanently eliminating the fuel and greenhouse gas emissions from 53 million cars. Billions of dollars are wasted generating energy that never reaches a single light bulb.
Fortunately, our energy can be made smart. It can be managed like the complex global system it is.
We can now instrument everything from the meter in the home to the turbines in the plants to the network itself. In fact, the intelligent utility system actually looks a lot more like the Internet than the traditional grid. It can be linked to thousands of power sources—including climate-friendly ones such as wind and solar. All of this instrumentation then generates new data, which advanced analytics can turn into insight, so that better decisions can be made in real time. This allows decisions by individuals and businesses on how they consume more efficiently. Decisions by utility companies on how they can better manage delivery and balance loads. Decisions by governments and societies on how to preserve our environment. The whole system can become more efficient, reliable, adaptive...smart.
Smart Grid projects are already helping consumers save 10% on their bills and are reducing peak demand by 15% . Imagine the potential savings when this is scaled to include companies, government agencies and universities. Imagine the economic stimulus that an investment in smarter grids could provide in America's current crisis.
The investment now being shaped in Washington could yield almost a quarter of a million jobs in digitizing the grid and in related industries such as alternative energy and automotive. It could enable new forms of industrial innovation by creating exportable skills, resources and technology.
DOE lists five fundamental technologies that will drive the Smart Grid:
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Integrated communications, connecting components to open architecture for real-time information and control, allowing every part of the grid to both ‘talk’ and ‘listen’
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Sensing and measurement technologies, to support faster and more accurate response such as remote monitoring, time-of-use pricing and demand-side management.
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Advanced components, to apply the latest research in superconductivity, storage, power electronics and diagnostics
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Advanced control methods, to monitor essential components, enabling rapid diagnosis and precise solutions appropriate to any event
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Improved interfaces and decision support, to amplify human decision-making, transforming grid operators and managers quite literally into visionaries when it come to seeing into their systems
Texas Institute and its partners, scientists and industry experts are working on smart grid solutions. We're working with companies globally to accelerate the adoption of smart grids to help make them more reliable and give customers better usage information. Our electrical network can be a symbol of progress again—if we embed the entire system with intelligence.
If you were to visualize the current grid, you might look at it as a star, with energy and information flowing in one direction from the center—from utilities to end users. The smart grid of the future will act much more like an interactive web, or “energy Internet,” with two-way communication and multi-directional power flow.
What is the smart grid?
The smart grid marries information technology with our current electrical infrastructure. The smart grid is, in essence, an “energy internet,” delivering real-time energy information and knowledge—empowering smarter energy choices.
Considering the energy challenges we currently face, we must find a way to do more with less. This is the role for a smarter grid, which:
Smart grid technologies provide utilities and consumers with real-time knowledge and decision-making tools that will empower them to save energy, resources, money, and the environment. The smart grid is a collection of hardware and software that works together to make today’s grid, smarter.
Think about how you used computers before the Internet. They were useful, yes, but isolated. With the growth of the Internet, all the computers in the world could be easily linked, allowing for better communication, information sharing, and data transfer. The Internet turned a regular computer into a much more powerful tool.
The same is true of the smart grid. Overlaying the current power infrastructure with smart grid technology is like connecting the Internet to the computer, making an already useful machine much better and providing people with information to make intelligent decisions. Similarly, the smart grid, or the “energy internet”, empowers consumers, businesses and utilities to make smarter energy choices.
Key Components of Smart Grid
The smart grid will include automation software and intelligent electronic hardware systems that control the transmission and distribution grids. Smart grid automation technologies — such as energy management systems and distribution management systems — help provide real-time knowledge and control over the distribution and transmission grids.
Energy Management
Most utilities today operate with a relatively smart transmission grid enabled by Energy Management Systems, which provide real-time information on the grid’s status, helping utilities automate various grid functionalities remotely.
This automation technology helps utilities:
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Choose the best, most affordable generation mix (known as economic dispatch), keeping costs lower for consumers and businesses.
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Reduce losses and waste in the delivery of power to drive a more efficient system.
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Maintain system reliability to help ensure a steady supply of power to customers
Distribution Management
Very few utilities in North America have a Distribution Management System, the smart grid automation technology that provides them with real-time information about the distribution network and allows utilities to remotely control switches in the grid.
The Distribution Management System is the heart of a smarter distribution grid, enabling utilities to manage distributed renewable generation, support grid efficiency technologies, and control the isolation and restoration of outages. Without it, the utility gets very little real-time information about the distribution grid and can't realize many of the benefits of a smarter grid.
Increasing Efficiency on the Line
What most people don’t know is that there’s inherent waste in the way our power is currently delivered. Without intelligent devices sensing how much voltage consumers need, utilities will often deliver too much.
Voltage Control–Sending Just what’s Needed
Smart grid technologies help improve efficiency by providing the utility with information–via this "energy Internet" we call a smart grid–so the utility can deliver just what is needed and maximize productivity.
Along power lines, a combination of electrical losses takes place due to the complexities of how power is currently delivered.
These losses take place due to something called reactive load and also “resistive load”, which is more like friction and has to do with the length of the line.
Adding sensors along the line can help manage for the losses due to reactive and reactive load.
Bringing More Renewables Online
Renewable energy resources, like wind and solar, are abundant and emissions-free and have the potential to help lead the nation toward energy independence.
Unfortunately, today's infrastructure is unable to maximize the benefits of significantly more renewable resources. Wind and solar resources are connected to the grid as "one-off" solutions that are generally not integrated with other generation nor optimized as a reliable first-tier energy source.
Additionally, when renewable resources are producing electricity, the possibility of congestion on transmission lines can create a barrier to their full utilization. The variability of renewable sources can also cause challenges. And when renewables are offline—when the wind doesn't blow or it's a cloudy day— other power generation will be needed to fill in the gaps.
Without infrastructure expansion and changes to the way the power system is operated, it will be difficult for the U.S. to produce more than 30% of its electricity (the target percentage for many states) from variable renewable energy resources, such as wind and solar .
The Variability of Renewable Power
Wind and solar power are inherently variable, meaning sometimes the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. Then what? Fortunately, smart grid technologies can help manage the unpredictability of wind and solar to help alleviate reliability and stability issues caused by power fluctuations. This will become increasingly important as more wind and solar power is connected to the grid.
Automated demand response technologies will act as a lever that utilities can pull to help lower demand in the event there is a gap in renewable power generation—for instance, if the wind stops blowing. To address such contingencies, a utility may incent consumers to opt into programs that allow certain devices (i.e., water heaters) to be temporarily switched off during peak times.
In the future, storage technologies could also help utilities manage the short-term imbalances in the supply and demand of energy, sometimes caused by the fluctuations of a lot of renewable energy. Batteries will store energy during times of excess wind energy production and discharge that energy via smart grid automation technologies when energy demand exceeds supply.
Grid Congestion
In some parts of the country, overburdened power lines make it difficult to move electricity from wind farms into the grid for consumption. There have been cases when wind farms are forced to shut down—even when the wind is blowing—because there is no capacity available in the lines for the electricity they create.
Without adequate transmission to transport power from "renewable" rich areas (like Texas) to densely populated areas, it is only cost effective to use renewable sources in certain areas of the country—at least for now.
While building new infrastructure would certainly help, smart grid technologies can also help utilities alleviate grid congestion and maximize the potential of our current infrastructure. Smart grid technologies can help provide real-time readings of the power line, enabling utilities to maximize flow through those lines and help alleviate congestion.
As smart grid technologies become more widespread, the electrical grid will be made more efficient, helping reduce issues of congestion. Sensors and controls will help intelligently reroute power to other lines when necessary, accommodating energy from renewable sources, so that power can be transported greater distances, exactly where it's needed.
Distributed Generation
Traditionally, electricity has flowed one way, from a power station to a customer. However, as more energy is generated by alternative sources, power will be entering the network from multiple locations, including the distribution network (i.e., distributed generation). These sources are often cleaner or more efficient; for example, combined heat and power plants (CHP) are more than 75% efficient, compared to traditional generation, which is only 49% efficient on average .
Unfortunately, the current grid was not designed with multi-directional power flow in mind. Two-way power flow, sophisticated controls, and grid automation technologies can help bring wind, solar and other alternative energy solutions safely into the distribution grid and move it where it's needed, when it's needed.
In some regions, individuals can contribute to energy production on the distribution grid by generating electricity at their home—for example, solar on rooftops. Where available, enhanced net-metering incents consumers to sell power back to the grid during peak pricing hours—so, consumers make money, and utilities are able to better manage peak demand. Whole neighborhoods could become solar or wind generation plants, introducing excess power back into the grid to meet demand.
Self-Healing Networks
Imagine if the Internet completely crashed due to a failure of a single router somewhere, and you had to wait for an expert to locate the problem and fix it. While this sometimes happens, we are more accustomed to the Internet automatically "self-healing" and routing data around the problem areas. So many problems on the Internet occur and are detected and avoided without us ever knowing.
The grid of today operates more like an office network than the Internet, and there is often little warning of impending issues. Grid intelligence brings aspects of "self-healing" and automation—or at the very least, monitoring—to the grid, helping prevent trouble before it occurs.
Reducing risk of unexpected equipment failure
Transformers are key components of an electric grid. A catastrophic failure of a critical transformer would result in power outages in the downstream network and could cause significant economic and environmental challenges. Smart grid monitoring and diagnostics technologies help utilities maximize asset performance and reduce unexpected transformer failure as well as subsequent power outages through alerts, detection, diagnosis, and prognosis. By monitoring different conditions within the transformer, such as gas levels, smart sensors will detect and report potential problems back to the utility in real-time. The information sent to the utility can be stored and analyzed by advanced software, helping predict and prevent potential transformer failure before it happens.
Compare this to the past, when utility personnel would drive around manually inspecting transformers on the grid and periodically extracting transformer oil for laboratory testing—typically, not as often as they should.
Smart grid asset optimization technologies help maximize asset performance and life for just a small fraction of what it would cost to replace them all together. In addition to improving grid reliability by predicting and preventing asset failure, these technologies also have environmental benefits -- preventing spills of oil and other environmentally hazardous material when transformers unexpectedly fail.
Automation, Monitoring & Control
Smart grid technologies help utilities improve power reliability through smart devices, automation technologies, and applications that adapt in real time. Utilities are able to monitor performance and identify outages, restore power, and precisely dispatch crews. The result: less "downtime" and happier customers. In fact, by 2020, smart grid technologies could decrease power interruptions by over 75% and save American industry more than $50 billion dollars .
Smart grid automation technologies, such as distribution management systems and outage management systems, can work in conjunction with smart meters and advanced metering infrastructure to provide real-time knowledge of the grid's status, enabling utilities to prevent trouble before it occurs.
In the case of an outage situation, these technologies will help alert the utility to exactly which homes and businesses are out of service-before a customer ever has to call. Geospatial information systems (GIS)—much like Google maps for the grid—will help utilities more easily and efficiently direct repair crews. In fact, mobile workforce applications empower smarter crews with this information on the road.
In advanced applications, monitoring and control technologies—known as fault diagnosis, isolation and restoration—can help mitigate the problem before deploying a repair crew. Using monitoring and control software, utilities will be able to identify problems on the grid and automatically reroute power to isolate damage and impact. Technically, these technologies help detect and isolate faulted feeder sections by opening and closing the necessary switches to restore power to the healthy feeder section within seconds. Once isolated, crews will immediately be dispatched to correct any problems.
Getting You the Information You Need
Today, most people are ill informed when it comes to energy consumption and costs, paying the bill every month without understanding what's included and how they are charged. This would be like filling up your gas tank every week with the gasoline price hidden, and not getting a bill until the end of the month.
With smart grid technologies in the home—like smart meters, smart grid panels, and smart appliances—consumers can have access to more accurate data and knowledge about electricity pricing, helping them save money and lower their environmental footprint.
Smart Meters
Currently, most power companies offer one set price for electricity throughout the day, regardless of how expensive it is to produce. Most consumers don't know that it costs much more to produce energy during the peak hours of the day—typically between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.—than it does at any other time.
Once the smart meter is installed, it's possible for the smart meter to communicate time-of-day pricing via smart home energy panels to help consumers make smarter energy choices throughout the day. Consumers will be more likely to use high-consuming devices during off-peak pricing periods, when electricity prices are cheaper. With smart meters, buying electricity is like buying other consumer goods—with price impacting purchase decision.
With this knowledge delivered via this at-home "energy Internet", you will have the power to make more informed decisions and manage your energy wisely—lowering your carbon footprint without having to compromise your lifestyle or comfort. Fear not — you won't have to sit and stare at your energy monitor all day and run around turning appliances on and off. You'll likely have the option to set preferences, so price signals automatically trigger your smart home to respond in financially and environmentally responsible ways.
For example, you may choose to have your house pre-cooled before arriving home to ensure the air conditioning system can remain off during expensive peak pricing hours, without impacting your comfort level. You could also have your water pre-heated to avoid peak prices and lower your energy bill.
A year-long study by the U.S. Department of Energy showed that real-time pricing information provided by the smart meter helped consumers reduce their electricity costs 10% on average and their peak consumption by 15%.
Smart meters can also enable consumers to pre-pay their electricity bill and help utilities better detect and manage outages. Smart meters coupled with advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) will help pinpoint problems on the grid, allowing utilities to determine exactly which customers are without power. Compare this to today, when many utilities still wait for customer calls to notify them of outages.
Smart Appliances
Smart appliances work with the smart meters to avoid peak-hour energy use and top-tier pricing-without any negative impact on the consumer-by adapting to price signals from the utility. Your dryer may automatically switch from high heat to "fluff" if electricity hits a certain per-kilowatt-hour rate—even if you're at work. Or, the automatic defrost on your refrigerator can delay itself even if you are across the country. If the freezer delays the defrost cycle until after peak energy hours, consumers pay less for the same amount of energy.
There are countless ways to conserve energy and save money when smart appliances are coupled with smart meters and time-of-day pricing information.
Plug-in electric vehicles
Plug-in electric vehicles unleash a world of possibilities, reducing our fuel costs, lowering our dependence on foreign oil, and cutting green house gas emissions.
A pure electric vehicle is a car that relies entirely on electricity stored in its battery for its power. While this type of car has the smallest environmental impact in terms of petroleum usage, it currently is not the most feasible option due to its limited range. Recently, another solution has emerged, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs).
Plug-in hybrids run primarily on battery power but also have a tank of gasoline for long trips. These vehicles differ from the typical hybrids currently available in that they have more battery energy, and these batteries are charged through a typical wall outlet. Eventually, plug-in hybrids will be able travel from 40 to 60 miles on a full charge using battery power alone.
Reduced Petroleum Usage and Operating Costs
The battery storage within these electric vehicles can be charged from a typical electrical outlet, reducing the need for petroleum. In fact, switching to plug-in vehicles could reduce U.S. oil importation by 52%. If we use less oil, we can decrease carbon emissions, promote energy independence, and save money. Also, plug-in vehicles can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 27% when comparing emissions of gasoline-powered vehicles to plug-in vehicles charged by electricity from the current generation mix—coal, natural gas, nuclear, and renewable power .
The good news for consumers?
While the costs of maintenance for these vehicles will remain about the same (suspension, tires, wipers, etc.), electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids are estimated to run at a third of the cost of typical gas-powered cars4, and there are substantial tax incentives to make the initial investment worthwhile.
What are the challenges?
Our current grid is not equipped to handle these vehicles on a large scale. If everyone plugged in at the same time, the current grid could not provide electricity to charge all the electric vehicles on the grid, and power reliability would be compromised. Also, if owners plugged their vehicles into public outlets, utilities would not know how to bill the correct consumers without advanced technology.
However, with smart grid technologies, these plug-in electric vehicles will not only be possible, but preferable. With real-time pricing and increased knowledge, consumers can make better decisions about when to use energy, especially when charging plug-in vehicles. In fact, they will be motivated to charge up their vehicles when electricity prices are cheaper, during off-peak hours. Smart grid technologies could help automatically take care of the recharge process once the consumer preferences have been set, much like a computer automatically runs back-ups and retrieves your e-mail messages.
With the right infrastructure in place, smart-grid technologies will help ensure that the right vehicle account is billed for vehicle charging, much like cell phone users are appropriately billed even while roaming out of their own service network.
1 www.doe.gov
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) refers to systems that measure, collect and analyze energy usage, from advanced devices such as electricity meters, gas meters, and/or water meters, through communication networks. This infrastructure includes hardware, software, communications, customer associated systems and energy management software.
Control Peak Power Costs
Controlling peak demand through time-based pricing programs and automated devices is a key component of energy conservation and resource management. Advanced two-way networks deliver the data for dynamic pricing along with remote control signals with verification. The result is the ability to offer customers efficient and effective demand response programs.
Load Shedding Devices
Command, control, and verification of load shedding devices for air conditioning, pool pumps, spas, programmable communicating thermostats, and domestic hot water is available for both Radio Frequency and PLC networks.
Improve Energy Reliability and Delivery
Obtaining proactive outage notification and restoration notification is a key benefit of AMI networks. When integrated with a network management software system, AMI data provides both customer service and engineering benefits. Some systems provide additional benefits, including selectable monitoring and reporting of voltage, load profile and coincident demand data for monitoring and maintaining the distribution network.
Cost Reduction
Scalable and cost-effective AMI products provide the precise energy information, analysis and control you need to reduce usage, cut utility costs and manage building operations. Your business can realize energy cost saving of 25%, while providing users lower leasing rates and superior energy options . Whether your facility is an office building, retail operation, government facility, university, a multi-use commercial property, the bread range of AMI technology offerings makes it easy to match technology to your needs, your facilities portfolio and your budget.
With solutions spanning basic sub-billing and enterprise-wide facility benchmarking, through emissions tracking for green house gas reduction, you’ll have the energy information you need to make the right decisions.
Applications
Demand Response and Load Curtailment
Energy Cost Control and Allocation
Operations & Maintenance
Peak Demand Reduction
Procurement Optimization
Power Quality Monitoring and Analysis
Power Availability and Reliability
Tenant Sub-billing
Utility Bill Verification
Value-added Tenant Services
Wages Monitoring
System Management Software
Real-time monitoring, alarming and power quality analysis help you avoid critical conditions that can cause equipment failures and downtime. The systems track consumption of electricity, gas and other resources and will break down usage by building, department or process. Historical trending identifies energy waste, unused system capacity and ways to extend equipment performance and life span. Dynamic control capabilities help you manage loads, generators or capacitor banks to reduce demand, avoid power factor penalties or to support participation in utility rate reduction programs.
Existing Electricity Meter Technology
Primary Circuit Smart Meters
Smart meters are digital meters that are read remotely over a private, secure network. The smart metering system is called advanced metering infrastructure and uses the latest advanced metering and communications technologies. The system will enable users to read all electric meters remotely and also send special commands to the meter.
The two-way communication capability of the system will enable utilities and users to more efficiently use electricity, such as the ability to on line real-time meter s data that can be used to monitor and manage consumption.
Sub-Metering Solutions
- Measure and track key performance indicators, such as watts/sq foot, occupancy, total/tenant load and common area costs
- Quantify the financial impact of conservation measures that won’t adversely impact tenants
- Encourage energy efficient behavior and measure the success of savings initiatives
- Benchmark efficiency against a database of industry statistics
Personal Energy Management
The in-home display is a consumer energy monitor that connects to two-way advanced metering networks using the wireless Zigbee® Smart Energy Profile. By displaying current energy use, historical data, energy pricing and alerts, the meter connects consumers to information necessary for successful energy efficiency programs.
Gas Meter & Regulator Technology
World demand for gas—a clean, cost-effective energy source—is steadily growing. As a result, investment is rising and gas transmission and distribution networks are expanding, while deregulation is allowing customers to choose suppliers based on price.
Combined, these factors necessitate fast, accurate and reliable measurement for gas producers and distributors. Advanced gas metering products, fully compatible with automated meter reading and smart metering solutions
Water Meter Technology
Water is a valuable natural resource, indispensable to sustainable development. To support more effective management of this precious resource, water utilities and municipalities need increasingly accurate measuring equipment for managing delivery and supporting conservation.
Communications Gateways
Gateways provide real-time, two-communications for SCADA, distribution automation, or outage management devices. Its integrated serial and Ethernet interfaces support a wide variety of devices including sub-meters redosers, sectionalizers, feeder switches, capacitor banks and controllers, transformers, and voltage regulators. Infrastructure can leverage parts of the AMI network, such as relays, to cost effectively support DA communications.
Professional Services
Texas Institute with its University and Commercial Partners offer a comprehensive set of service offerings, to help our customers deliver solutions specific to their business goals. These offerings span all phases of a solution life cycle, from consulting to implementation to support.
Consulting & Analysis
From program design to measurement and verification, our team of economists, statisticians, and engineers has the experience and analytical resources to help you answer your energy usage and efficiency questions, or deliver comprehensive analysis and reports for utilities, commissions and others.
Energy Analysis
Early in the planning cycle, organizations often need to know the potential energy savings of a particular project. Our potential analysis studies provide our clients with results for the energy savings produced by energy-efficiency programs or other  interventions.
Our approach allows clients to explore strategically the effect of various strategies and technologies.
Our analysis estimates energy efficiency potential from a bottom-up approach, utilizing analytical models combined with systematic data collection.
We can assess costs and savings with energy-efficiency technology. With these insights, our clients know the “achievable potential,” which estimates what is possible and at what cost. They can then knowledgeably plan how best to serve their current and future markets.
Load Research
Texas Institute provides customers options for load research, ranging from analysis and reporting on interval electric or gas data provided by clients to full turn-key load-research studies, including study design, customer recruitment, load research implementation, and data analysis.
Load Profile Analysis
For load profile analysis we makes use of its extensive library of load shapes in order to simulate customer electric considering factors such as historic energy usage, weather patterns, type of home or business, time of day or week, and season. The resulting load profile models are used for system planning, daily energy purchasing, and settlements between utilities and power marketers.
 Renewable & Distributed Generation ServicesResearch, Development & Demonstration
Texas Institute closely coordinates the development and demonstration of new ways to gain value from distributed power generation, with particular expertise in renewable power sources such as solar and wind.
Potential Analysis
Conducting a number of studies on the potential for all types of renewable power sources and cogeneration. These studies considered factors such as source energy availability, land usage, access to transmission lines, environmental impacts, and/or host customer energy needs and load shapes.
Program Design and Evaluation
Texas Institute works directly with clients on the design and monitoring of renewable and distributed generation programs. We can support program design using potential studies, cost data, analysis of energy rates, customer acceptance, and utility needs. Program evaluation services can include on-going monitoring and data collection from deployed installations, including analysis of interval load data, review of equipment and energy costs, in-depth interviews with customers and other stakeholders, analysis of the value to the electric system, and identification of environmental benefits.
Regulatory Support
Regulatory support is a particularly important part of the Texas Institutes capabilities. This service can benefit the regulatory decision-making process through engineering and statistical analyses, policy analysis, and technology reviews, coupled with expert testimony or participation in public workshops.
Load Management & Demand Response Services
Pilot Project Implementation
When customers are considering load management and demand response programs, Texas Institute scientist, engineers and economists can design, implement and report on pilot projects. Pilot project services include: developing a research plan, including research goals, designing and selecting a sample, recruiting volunteers, arranging for equipment installation, collecting load and customer satisfaction information, reporting on results, and making recommendations.
Advanced Metering Support
Texas Institute can supports load management and demand response through advanced metering and meter reading capability, software for managing load curtailments, monitoring direct load control, load data collection and analysis, software hosting, and remote load data collection.
Contract Research
In partnership with our local universities, The Texas Institute offers discounted and co-managed contract research services. North Texas’ university research and development capabilities combine to offer any and every potential contract work that your business could use. Please see our Technical Disciplines section under the Solutions tab to learn more about our combined capabilities.
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Copyright 2009 by Texas Institute
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