Hydro Ottawa and City of Summerside to Optimize Microgrids with AI

Oct 29, 2018

BluWave-ai has signed two collaboration agreements with global innovators Hydro Ottawa and the City of Summerside in PEI to optimize use of renewable energy in smarter grids by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI). Customers will benefit from increased resiliency of electricity supply and delivery, better air quality, reduced greenhouse gases, and overall cost savings.

With Hydro Ottawa, BluWave-ai will be managing large campus scale, grid-attached microgrids with local artificial intelligence along with city-wide control using The Grid Edge Active Transactional Demand Response (The GREAT-DR) solution platform.

The City of Summerside on Prince Edward Island, has an isolated smart grid with solar, wind, diesel generation, battery storage, and grid supply from the mainland North American grid. BluWave-ai will optimize use of renewable energy and battery storage to offset diesel fuel usage and grid energy import.

As part of these deployments, both utilities will quantify additional benefits of artificial intelligence to predict and optimize generation and loads in their service area. The utilities will be offering their live networks and utility expertise to assist enhancement of BluWave-ai’s artificial intelligence innovations. “At Hydro Ottawa, our goal is to be a leading partner in a smart energy future for our customers,” says Guillaume Paradis, Director, Distribution Engineering and Asset Management at Hydro Ottawa. “Leveraging emerging technology like artificial intelligence lets us enable our customers to connect renewable generation, electric vehicle charging and clean electric heating. The applications of this technology are far reaching — from campuses to substations — especially if used with The GREAT-DR open architecture solution that we’re leading development of.”

“Summerside has deployed wind, solar and storage to reduce energy costs, offsetting diesel and imported grid power creating the most integrated, advanced smart grid in North America with diversified renewable sources,” said Greg Gaudet, Director of Municipal Services at City of Summerside, “Our collaboration with BluWave-ai allows us to further advance our technical leadership and assess AI for improving the efficiency and economics of the city’s energy supply.”

BluWave-ai’s distributed AI-based software optimizes the operation of smart grids and microgrids. It uses both real-time and archived data to perform accurate predictions of loads and renewable generation output, sending recommendations, signals and actions to optimally manage grid resources. BluWave-ai’s solution consists of components at the edge and cloud data centre, which can be licensed with a SaaS model. BluWave-ai Edge is installed at the aggregation points of IoT sensors, meters, and other sources of data. AI models include wind, solar, battery state-of-charge, load, and energy market pricing.