Amit Narayan & Rajeev Singh, AutoGrid | AWS Startup Showcase: Innovations with CloudData & CloudOps
Channel: SiliconANGLE theCUBE
Date: 24/03/2021

Amit Narayan, CEO, AutoGrid & Rajeev Singh, CTO, AutoGrid sit down with Dave Vellante for the AWS Startup Showcase: Innovations with CloudData & CloudOps

#CubeOnCloudStartups #CloudInnovation #theCUBE

https://siliconangle.com/2021/03/24/cloud-ai-thermostat-meet-ders-electric-grid-future-cubeoncloudawsstartups/

Cloud, AI & your thermostat: Meet the DERs electric grid of the future

BY R. DANES

Distributed energy resources, or DERs, will help solve the global energy shortage in coming years. Defined as small-scale units of local generation connected to the grid at the distribution level, DERs have the potential to reduce the harmful effects of climate change and pollution from fossil fuels. These resources can also help businesses and households shave dollars off their energy bills, and even profit from a decentralized energy market.

But harnessing and distributing DERs present challenges the energy grid wasn’t designed to handle. Can massive cloud compute resources and artificial intelligence redesign a DERs-capable grid for the future? One company addressing this issue is AutoGrid Systems Inc.

“You can think of us as an autopilot for the grid, and our technology is called Virtual Power Plant, which allows us to harness the power from all these distributed energy resources,” said Amit Narayan (pictured, left), founder and chief executive officer of AutoGrid.

Narayan and Rajeev Singh (pictured, right), chief technology officer of AutoGrid, spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the AWS Startup Showcase Event: Innovators in Cloud Data. They discussed the growth of DERs, its potential to solve energy challenges, and AutoGrid’s reliance on cloud for its key features. (* Disclosure below.)

The future of the DERs market
The complexity involved in transacting with small generators is very high, according to Narayan. The energy industry is designed for transactions between very large generators and utilities. DERs introduce millions of transactions between very small entities — perhaps even homeowners — and utilities. 

“Neither the utilities have the capability today to have these transactions, nor the asset owners and operators,” Narayan explained. 

A number of reports predict huge growth for DERs over the next several years. A report from Wood Mackenzie Ltd. predicts cumulative  DERs capacity  in the U.S. will reach 387 gigawatts by 2025, while an Australian report forecasts that 40% of energy customers will use DERs by 2027. Sources are diversifying with smart home thermostats, appliances and electric cars joining solar panels, batteries and windmills.

Many people think the grid is a sort of battery and may assume this is great since it can absorb this extra energy for everyone’s benefit. In fact, the grid is more like a shallow pool, and when sources offload surplus energy into it, problems can result for utilities, requiring expensive new technology solutions.

Ideally, an electricity grid keeps supply and demand in constant balance. This isn’t always easy for traditional grids, which run one way from a large generator to consumers. It is even more difficult to achieve for a grid bombarded by countless DERs units. 

Virtual power plants keep supply-demand score
Going from a gigawatt-scale power plant to, say, Tesla Powerwalls means replacing one generator with more than 200,000 mini generators for the same amount of power. And the complexity of energy optimization grows exponentially with the number of assets, according to Narayan.

“It’s far beyond what the current algorithms can handle,” he said. 

AutoGrid has set out to enable the grid of the future through “virtual power plants.” These are built from a virtualization layer around all kinds of energy assets, homes, batteries, solar panels, etc. Then, it applies AI and machine learning to harness, coordinate and orchestrate all of them, making that massive complexity manageable. 

“In a way, we are now rebuilding the grid outside-in, where if you have a battery in your home, not only can it power your own home when the power’s out, it can actually provide power back to the grid — or to your neighbors,” Narayan said. 

Greater intelligence about capacity helps utilities balance supply and demand. This makes it possible for a smart thermostat in your home to store energy when grid draw and prices are low and discharge when prices are high, saving users money.

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“I think we are really at a great inflection point right now, where if we can harness this newly developed consciousness and awareness to accelerate our transition to new energy, away from fossil fuel, we can really solve what I think is the biggest challenge that we face as a society going forward,” Narayan concluded.