Report on HAN-based CAISO telemetry field study

Through 2016 and 2017, PG&E teamed with Olivine to explore cost effective options to meet CAISO telemetry requirements through a feasibility lab test and field study.   

In the initial lab study, two HAN gateway devices were connected to PG&E smart meters to deliver data to the Olivine Remote Intelligent Gateway — a component of the Olivine software platform, Olivine DER.   Acting as Zigbee to broadband gateways communicating to Olivine’s cloud RIG, both devices were able to accurately and reliably send data from the PG&E SmartMeter™ to Olivine.  We determined that both of the selected devices were capable of meeting CAISO requirements.  In the follow-on field study, Olivine worked with other project partners to deploy 400 of the Rainforest EAGLE devices to customers to test deployment, reliability, and accuracy issues in the field. 

From the paper:

PG&E’s CAISO Telemetry Solution Over Broadband is a 2017 DR Emerging Technologies (DRET) project to study the potential for Home Area Network (HAN) technologies to meet the CAISO telemetry requirements in residential aggregation. This report is meant to inform key stakeholders, including the CAISO and Demand Response Providers (DRPs), with specific focus on Proxy Demand Resources (PDR).  A strong conclusion from this study is that the current CAISO direct telemetry requirements for PDRs are prohibitive for mass market implementation.

Olivine has been fairly vocal on one issue identified in this report: the CAISO telemetry requirement for energy-only PDRs of 10 MW and greater is prohibitive for DR because of the much greater costs associated with reliably managing aggregations of telemetry than that of conventional generation.  Noting that all IOUs and third party DRPs have avoided the telemetry requirement to date by splitting up natural aggregations into sub-10 MW resources.  Reducing the costs of telemetry is not the solution to this problem; raising the MW requirement or eliminating it for energy-only PDRs is a rationale, equitable solution.

The full report is available on the web site of the Emerging Technologies Coordinating Council

For information on the lab study, see the previous post: https://olivineinc.com/olivine-report-on-han-based-caiso-telemetry-lab-study/

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