Demand Response: Doing more with your power generation assets

Join me as we talk to Nicole Eldredge about Demand Response. What is it and do you need it?

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Transcript

Lou:  Good Day and welcome everyone to Power Bytes!  I am your host Lou Signorelli and Power Bytes is your destination Podcast for power generation discussions.  As always please know how much we appreciate you, our listeners.  We hope you find our topics helpful and interesting.  There are several ways for you to get in touch with the show. You can send us an email at powerbytes@cat.com, visit us at Cat Electric Power on Facebook or LinkedIn.  Please remember to subscribe, follow, and comment on your experience today, wherever you're listening from today. 

Lou: A term that is lighting up the internet in recent years is Demand Response.  Some say, Demand response programs are voluntary programs that allow you, the electricity user, to reduce your electricity usage during high or peak demand periods. In many cases, in exchange, you will be compensated through your utility for decreasing your energy use when requested.  The more accurate definition is that Demand Response programs deliver support to the grid as "demand" on the grid changes.  Thus those owners that have generating assets can flex those assets creating for themselves an economic engine that creates revenue. 

Joining me today to talk a little about how to participate in these programs in Nicole Warnstedt. Nicole is one of our Electric power sales reps that covers the southwest of the US. She has been with Cat since 2019, and worked in Electric power her entire career. Her background is in mechanical engineering and is currently living in Dallas, TX.  

Nicole, thanks for joining us today. 

Nicole: Thanks for having me, Lou!  

Lou: So, as a means of level setting, what are some of the 'must haves' to enable demand response from an owner's perspective. 

Nicole: When a customer is considering demand response, they will need to think about how to support their electricity usage. A good way to do this is to have a backup generator to reduce their utility usage during peak demand. To be more specific, using gas generators as backup allows for continual running of the unit. With gas generators at their site, the customer can still have the same electricity usage and receive money back from the utility. More than one generator can be used in this situation by paralleling them together to allow for more energy usage by the customer during these peak demand times. Another way to support the generator is to utilize solar panels and energy storage. Putting this together with the generators creates a microgrid. These can all be connected and monitored through a microgrid controller to make sure everything is running smoothly.  

Above, I don't like the word supplement.  Supplement makes it sound like they are peak shaving.  Better way might be "think about how to support their electricity usage."  Supplement is fine for when you talk about solar panels and storage. - NW made this change

 Lou: An important topic when discussing generators is emissions. Can you speak to how our gas generators keep their emissions low? 

Nicole: Sure! We have a new gas product coming which has a lean burn engine. A learn burn engine has a lower exhaust temperature and lower exhaust Nox and CO emissions than a rich burn engine, which leads to higher power density and better fuel efficiency for this gas generator. This allows the gas unit to also have a non-emergency certification without aftertreatment on the unit.  

Lou: Nicole, that seems like a lot to have just to participate.  Let's see if we can break it down into more 'bite-sized' pieces.   First let talk fuels.  Recall, that we did a couple nice episodes on fuels last year. At a high level is fuel flexibility important?   

Nicole: Yes! For example, in California, it is common for gas generators to run on renewable natural gas, which is important to sustainability of the microgrid setup. This is not exclusive to California though. Anyone who has an interest in using renewable natural gas can do so. 

 Lou:  If my genset is not large enough to carry my facility load,  is it ok to parallel.

 Nicole:  Absolutely! Paralleling gensets – particularly gas gensets – is easily done with the right controller offering on the genset. The controller allows for the units to communicate between one another to turn on as more energy is needed by the customer. It also helps for redundancy, meaning if there is something going on with the genset that doesn't allow it to run, then there is another ready to run. 

 Lou: Do I need a complicated controller to parallel?

 Nicole:  Not at all. Caterpillar's family of gensets controllers offers a myriad of solutions depending on the application. These controllers have an easy user interface which makes it simple to control your paralleled gens. 

 Lou: Nicole, is it possible to take my single or even my paralleled gensets and integrate them into a microgrid?

 Nicole:  Yes, that is another beauty of the Caterpillar offering.  We have a microgrid controller that can act as a supervisory controller for the entire site.  So If you have solar, and energy storage, we can integrate and control it all for optimal performance. 

 It's important to recognize that all energy sources have their pros and cons.  Wind and solar only work when the sun is up and/or the wind is blowing.  Energy storage is a nice buffer but very costly for a long term outage.  That's where the integration of a gas genset comes into play.  The fuel is not costly and it can run for as long as needed.  

 Lou: One last question Nicole, what about connectivity.  I know that we did two episodes on the topic with Magy Kramer, but are we still able to connect to all of these devices and take advantage of all that capability?

 Nicole: Definitely. All units come with the capability of reporting data and all Cat products can be connected with their respective devices and monitored through Cat Remote Asset Monitoring.

 Lou: Summary : There you have it folks.  I’d like to thank Nicole Warnstedt for sharing her expertise with us today.  If you'd like to get in touch with the show, you can reach us at PowerBytes@cat.com or at Cat Electric Power on Facebook or LinkedIn.  Be sure to subscribe to Power Bytes wherever you listen to your podcasts.  Until next time, have a great rest of your day!