The MiGen Science
Benefits to
Customers
Long-term investment opportunity.
Simplified integration of state-of-the-art solar generation system and load control devices.
Managed electricity usage while retaining control of appliances and devices.
Increased value, control and comfort when using or generating electricity.
Reduced environmental impact and greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint by limiting peak demands.
Improved reliability of electricity service and the ability to keep critical circuits connected in the event of a power outage.
Benefits to
Industry
Automated demand response and transactive energy through to the grid edge.
Guaranteed better demand response for the market operator.
Increased grid control and flexible operation for local distribution companies (distribution system operators).
Lower cost and more resilient than traditional grid shoring solutions.
Agent-based and fully standards-compliant (esp. IEEE2030.5).
Adherence to Privacy-by-Design principles and best cyber security practices.
Encourages interoperability and democratization of the Grid (open source and royalty free platform solution architecture).
Democratizing the Grid at its Edge
The MiGen platform will largely automate demand response and transactive energy right through to the grid edge – where a customer connects their devices to the electrical grid. This will give customers more control over their electricity usage.
At the same time, it will create a more resilient grid, where electricity market operators (like Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator or IESO) will gain stronger demand response guarantees. Local utilities (such as Hydro Ottawa) will also have more control and flexibility in managing their own distribution system, especially when demand fluctuates.
Overall, this project is about giving all stakeholders – customers, utilities and market operators – more influence over how the smart grid operates. This, in turn, will translate into electricity grid efficiencies, while ensuring its robustness and reliability.
The goal of Hydro Ottawa and its Collaborators is to democratize smart grids in Ontario and all over the world by encouraging its growing adoption by market operators, utilities, equipment manufacturers and customers. As such, MiGen is being developed as a standards compliant, open source and worldwide offering, free of royalties.
Empowering Prosumers
A prosumer is a customer who both produces and consumes energy – a shift that’s occurring with the growth of new connection technologies and the steady increase in the adoption of renewable energy like solar and wind.
Prosumers in the energy business are growing as more customers generate their own electricity from rooftop solar panels and use it for their EVs. As a result, electricity consumption is no longer a one-way street. Increasingly, smart grid technologies are blurring the lines between electricity generation and consumption.
With MiGen, a Customer as a Prosumer will experience more value, control and comfort when using or generating electricity – all while helping maintain the integrity of the grid.
Solar Generation, Energy Storage, Load Control and Transactive Energy
Home energy use is typically “sparse and spiky”, meaning that at different times, customers either use little or huge amounts of electricity. To ensure that electricity is available regardless, utilities must provision it for the “worst-case-scenario”, like when every customer’s air conditioning is turned on or every customer’s solar panels are supplying electricity into the grid, at the same time. This can have a huge impact on power quality, the security of supplying power, and cost of delivering electricity.
This project uses a technology called “Transactive Energy” that enables devices that use or produce electricity to work together seamlessly, thereby maintaining a balance between supply and demand. If one customer can’t participate at any time, the neighbouring customers might be able to compensate. With the variety of devices and the greater number of customers that can transact, each customer gains more flexibility and comfort, while helping to maintain the needed balance between supply and demand.
Shaping the electricity flow profile is done in real-time by adjusting demand, generation and storage within homes. This is performed by an intelligent transactive agent at the neighbourhood transformer that negotiates through a Customer Agent with the Home Energy Management System.
MiGen design adheres to Privacy-by-Design principles and best cyber security practices, including the IEEE2030.5 standard. In addition, it follows a robust data governance model that can efficiently and securely communicate transactions to the sub-second.
The aggregated and anonymized data collected and analyzed by Hydro Ottawa and its Collaborators over the trial period is vitally important. It will forever change how the customer, the local distribution company (Hydro Ottawa) and the electricity grid market operator (the Independent Electricity System Operator) interact with and manage the smart grid.