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Energy Flow Across the Power Grid Energy Flow Across the Power Grid

Organize, Analyze, and Optimize

Energy Flow Across the Power Grid

Hitachi GRID-YZE delivers greater resilience, increased reliability, reduces congestion, and lower costs

As the U.S. population continues to grow, so does our society’s need for more reliable, sustainable and cost-effective electricity. With more people moving to urban centers and the evolving supply of distributed energy resources, dependable energy is essential to realizing the vision of the smart city, where Internet of Things (IoT) solutions are helping to create a safer, healthier and more sustainable future. That’s why Hitachi developed GRID-YZE as part of our social innovation solution for optimizing and utilizing the energy grid in real time.

Hitachi GRID-YZE solution 

Delivering energy in today’s world is complex—and it’s not getting any easier. Maintaining the electricity network from transmission to distribution requires a keen eye for flow constraints, system integrity and protection. But without real-time visibility across the grid, operators rely on historical data analysis to estimate power loads and keep electricity flowing, making it difficult to optimize energy resources.

Today’s energy organizations face several challenges, including aging infrastructure with constrained and limited energy transferring capability, integration of renewable generation sources, and the ability to meet new and future regulations. Power flow corridors that are congested may require new transmission lines to address power flow, voltage quality and network stability issues. Energy companies are also looking for new ways to optimize clean and low-cost generation of solar and wind energy, while meeting regulations wanting increased reliability and resiliency.

The unbundled U.S energy market also presents challenges to grid optimization. Today, in many regions, energy generation, transmission, distribution and market management are all handled by different organizations such as utility companies, power generators and independent system operators (ISOs). Integration and cooperation across these entities is vital and GRID-YZE enables an integrated solution. In this environment, grid optimization has the potential to deliver the real-time assessment and responsiveness required for greater resilience, increased reliability and lower costs.

Everybody wins with GRID-YZE

By optimizing the energy grid, every entity along the energy chain wins. For example, customers receive reliable energy at lower rates and fast restoration when issues occur. Utility companies and ISOs can increase system reliability, power flow, integrate renewables like wind and solar power, and respond rapidly to power events. And, grid optimization helps energy organizations comply with increasingly stringent regulations.

With GRID-YZE from Hitachi Energy Solutions, organizations can instantly monitor and analyze online and off-line data from the spider web of power sources to create optimized solutions that dispatch electricity according to the requested load. Since the energy grid is different wherever you go, GRID-YZE is tailored to meet the mix of coal, gas, hydroelectric, nuclear and renewable energy sources.

GRID-YZE power network optimization and stability management system allows energy companies to monitor and organize online grid data, perform power flow and grid stability analysis, and optimize grid operations—all in real time. The solution integrates with ISOs, utility companies and energy generators, and pulls data from the grid to provide a simultaneous view of operations, including system operating limits. After analyzing voltage quality, transient stability and contingencies, the solution enables optimization of system operations to increase reliability, power flow, generator dispatch, stable integration of renewables and faster response to outages.

With this level of visibility, operators can establish real-time system operational limits that are more precise and less restrictive than off-line and seasonally calculated operating limits. The solution also enables online special protection schemes and dynamic protection scheme settings for fast and reliable protection response to critical events. With generation dispatch prioritization, organizations can seamlessly switch to renewable solar or wind for more economic, clean and efficient power generation.

Finally, GRID-YZE makes it easy to store and organize historical grid data, so you can retrieve information quickly to gain insights from real-time comparison of operations with historical events. These insights help operators better understand existing issues and look ahead to recommend changes that will further benefit grid optimization.

Evaluation from Experience

GRID-YZE has evolved from a multigenerational implementation in the Japan market, culminating in use cases involving several development companies and utilities. The original concept was implemented in the mid-1990’s and has grown with the emergence of new and innovative technologies. Here are a few of the benefits:

Power Generation

Reduced power generation shedding

Power generation shedding is an intentional electrical power shutdown where electricity delivery is stopped for different parts of the distribution region. With GRID-YZE’s monitoring and analytic capabilities, substantially reduced power shedding has been realized compared to manual calculations.

Total Transfer Capability

Increased total transfer capability (TTC)

TTC refers to the amount of electric power that can be reliably transferred from one area to another area of the transmission system using all transmission lines (or corridors). In one application, TTC was increased by over 50% (approximately 1,000MW) which provided an economic benefit of over $500,000 per day to the entire value chain.

Improved Voltage Control

Improved voltage control

Hitachi GRID-YZE solution enables utilities to deploy online special protection schemes to avoid dynamic voltage cascading failures collapse. It also allows optimal generation dispatchment and switching control of reactive power sources to maintain transient stability and minimize system oscillations.

Hitachi energy solutions

Hitachi co-creates with energy organizations to improve society

With a growing need for reliable and sustainable energy, Hitachi GRID-YZE can help organizations across the energy generation, transmission and distribution spectrum to fulfill these energy demands. GRID-YZE highlights the collaboration between Hitachi and its partners to co-create solutions that benefit U.S. society.

Our experts work closely with energy organizations to understand their challenges, and co-create solutions that prepare them for a successful future. If you’re interested in learning more about optimizing energy with Hitachi GRID-YZE, contact Jack Joyce to schedule a complimentary energy optimization workshop. We’ll discuss your energy challenges and help you gain real-time control of your power grid.