SBIR-STTR Award

Commercial and industrial facilities that limit peakdemand realize major utility cost savings in many areas of thecountry. Reducing demand is typically accomplished through loadshedding to the limit that maintains comfort levels and essentialservices. The utility benefits from its customer's peak reductionsby maintaining capacity margins that delay committing large sumsfor new generating capacity. This, in turn, stabilizes utilitycosts and, therefore, benefits everyone. Standby generators atcommercial and industrial facilities may achieve further reductionsin electrical den-&and and increase the cost savings withoutcompromising comfort levels or essential services because loads arenot shed, but transferred to the generators during peak periods. Standby generators are not a widespread practice today becausetheir benefits are not easy to calculate because of complex rateschedules. Also, significant operator attention to generators isrequired to achieve cost savings reliably. Finally, criticalloads, typically connected to Standby generator automatic transferswitches (ATS), may be small, nonconstant loads, and power to theseloads is briefly interrupted when they are transferred. Thisproblem can easily be overcome by either employing aclosed-transition ATS or by establishing a separate ATS and a largeconstant load to transfer to the generator during demand limiting. This project's objective is to overcome the remaining barriers toachieving the economic benefits reliably. Phase I consists of thedesign analysis, testing and demonstration of the control system ina commercial host facility.Anticipated Results/Potential Commercial Applications as described by the awardee:Successful completion of this project willdemonstrate the technical and economic feasibility that utilitydemand can be reduced by at least 10% for commercial and industrialfacilities that already have installed and are operatingconventional energy management control systems that use hedule ordemand-shed selected loads. Potential commercial applications ofthese concepts are broad. Peak shaving can assist current andpotential end-users in the commercial and industrial sector bysignificantly lowering their electricity costs. It can also assistutilities by limiting the peak electrical demand on their network. Limiting of peak utility demand has major economic significance toboth the utility and the end-users, because it can delay decisionsto add new generating, transmission, and distribution capabilities.

A market survey of standby power systems coupled with results of the Phase I feasibility demonstration indicates that automatic control of standby power systems, to reduce peak electrical demand levels in commercial and industrial facilities, can substitute for up to 28 gigawatts of planned utility peaking capacity in this decade. The resulting reduction in capital investment needed to meet growth would create very large economic benefits for electrical ratepayers and make capital available for other important investments. Standby system control in Phase I was achieved with a proprietary microprocessor-based controller system that fully automated the process and did not require interconnected parallel operation with the utility system. To promote commercialization of this control technology, further design and development of the controller and peripherals is planned for Phase II, including technical advances to expandthe applications potential to cover configurations and conditions expected to bound the needs of most commercial and industrial buildings. Technical advances are also planned to add design features to (1) improve economic perfon lance of peak shaving systems, (2) lower the costs for retrofitting a facility for peak shaving, and (3) add communications data links to provide for remote direct dispatch and on-line metering. To establish confidence levels needed in the private business sector for rapid commercialization, Phase II demonstration tests are planned in participation host facilities. These demonstrations and other reliability studies will establish an operating data base to support the reliability and economic performance of the controller and peripheral products to encourage use of the technology in a wide range of applications. Design, installation, and operating data will be collected from host facilities and analyzed extensively for use in the design process for advancing the development of controller and peripherals and to guide future applications of the technology in the follow_on commercialization phase.Anticipated Results/Potential Commercial Applications as described by the awardee:Full scale commercialization is estimated to create an attractive retum on investment for commercial and industrial end users that modify their standby power systems to perfoml peak shaving, promote the use of cleaner buming alternate fuels, reduce our dependence on foreign oil imports, and improve the economic use of the nation's energy supplies by reducing the need for new utility generation and transmission capacity additions. Based on predictions of decreasing national reserve generation margins, use of the technology can also be expected to improve utility system reliabilities. Potential commercial applications include all govemment facilities, large commercial buildings, and industrial processes where stand-by power is installed.