BOULDER, Colo. and TEL AVIV, Israel, June 21, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- mPrest, a leading developer and provider of distributed asset orchestration and optimization software for the energy market, today announced its mDERMS platform will be used by energy provider MCE in the Richmond Advanced Energy Community (AEC) project. The project is led by the Zero Net Energy (ZNE) Alliance and will develop and test comprehensive, scalable clean energy solutions to revitalize the lower-income neighborhood of Richmond, CA.
Richmond is home to the largest refinery in the western U.S. as well as two busy regional freeways and a major port, all contributing to high rates of toxic emissions. Richmond also reports that nearly one fifth of its residents live in poverty and many homes in the town have remained vacant following the 2009 financial crisis.
The program is backed by $4.9M in California Energy Commission (CEC) funding and will seek to rehabilitate abandoned homes, implement an energy efficiency compliance program for retrofit projects, and establish a distributed energy resource (DER) community with sites across industrial, commercial, and residential settings. Across these sites, DERs will include smart thermostats, PV + storage, HVAC systems, refrigeration and electric vehicle supply equipment, and other smart devices that will be aggregated into a virtual power plant (VPP) operated by MCE.
mPrest will provide MCE’s DERMS, implemented as an OpenADR “virtual top node (VTN),” deploying mPrest’s mDERMS platform to integrate and optimize these DER aggregations to maximize customer value. Leveraging information from the California Independent Systems Operator (CAISO) and MCE’s scheduling agent, market price and procurement data will be layered into mDERMS for analysis and forecasting. From there, mDERMS will deliver recommendations to the Scheduling Agent to implement dispatch signals to the DER fleet.
mPrest will offer training for MCE teams on utilizing the platform and its executive dashboard of key performance impact metrics as well as provide DER analytics, forecasting, situational awareness and economic dispatch support for the Richmond AEC. mPrest’s team will be responsible for the coordination and delivery of all DERMS reporting during the program, providing crucial measurement and verification support across the planned 100 residential and 20 commercial/industrial DER deployments.
“We’re excited to work with MCE and mPrest to incorporate the distributed energy resources and advanced energy management tools into the Richmond AEC project,” said Sam Irvine, Director of Operations at ZNE Alliance. “We believe this teaming will help advance the goals of decarbonization and resilience among customers while providing an opportunity to prove the value of DER load management that is linked with the market activities of a leading CCA. Lower-income residents frequently lack access to energy efficient home technologies, incentive programs and renewable resources, severely limiting their inclusion in the economic and environmental benefits of clean energy. As we deploy DERs in community and commercial sites, a robust DERMS, as provided by mPrest, is essential to visualize and optimize the benefits of these assets for customers, providing value through reduced greenhouse gas emissions, economic development, and increased resiliency.”
“Equitable access to clean energy is proving to be one of the greatest challenges of the energy transition,” said Andy Bennett, CEO of mPrest. “mPrest is ready to take on this challenge by deploying our DERMS solution in the Richmond AEC pilot. With the introduction of a DER community in Richmond, our platform can provide value to MCE and its customers through situational awareness, operational support and reporting. We believe mDERMS is the right solution for this project and represents one that can be adopted and scaled for future efforts to promote clean energy in mid-to-low income areas.”
In developing the program, partners will also create an AEC Resource Center and Solutions Toolkit including case studies and learnings that can inform other California communities on these technologies and enable them to scale this project within other low-to-middle income areas throughout the state.
About mPrest – Empower Digital Transformation. Now.
Leveraging its unparalleled experience and expertise in real-time mission-critical command and control software, mPrest has developed the world-leading distributed asset orchestration and optimization software. mPrest’s micro-services based, real-time orchestration and optimization platform brings the power of AI and IoT to the digital transformation of various industries, from energy and smart cities, through oil & gas, connected cars, water, defense and other industry 4.0 applications. mPrest’s applications suite, including Distributed Energy Resources Management Systems (DERMS) and Asset Health Management (AHM) are deployed on premise or in the cloud in record time in the most forward-looking and efficient organizations worldwide, including some of the world’s largest energy companies. mPrest’s vendor-agnostic product suite interfaces with millions of sensors, devices, machines, assets, subsystems, IT and OT applications, creating a system of systems that provides end-to-end visibility and control over complex and distributed operations. Visit us at www.mprest.com
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