As today’s power grid rapidly evolves, it has become abundantly obvious that there is both great potential and great risk inherent in the process.  Much of our future success or failure will depend on the steps we take today to think about and plan for tomorrow’s grid.  

At Electric Power Engineers (EPE), we believe these rapidly occurring developments will require a major re-design of our future grid, at multiple levels.  We need to identify what data we want and when we want it, how we will analyze it, and what we intend to do with the results.  

EPE has been a leading pioneer in the area of data and analysis for decades.  We’ve helped our utility clients and resource developers address challenges across the grid, ranging from interconnection studies, to power system planning exercises, to the evaluation of distributed assets as an optimized virtual power plant.  We know that to maintain leadership in this field, we must keep investing and pushing the frontiers to build better, modular and easy-to-use tools that will help clients identify and take action on the critical variables that matter.

As part of our effort, we are working with some of the leading universities and research institutions in the country.  EPE was recently awarded a contract with Texas A&M to develop and implement an integrated Power System Control Center of the future, using our proprietary ENER-i™ distribution system analytics platform. This partnership will focus on the future design of a distributed energy resource ecosystem and answer important questions relating to design and infrastructure investments.  We also have formal relationships with researchers at the University of Texas and the University of Florida, as we further build out ENER-i™ as a tool to serve and empower the industry.   

We are already putting those early lessons into practice to help serve our customers.  EPE simulations of actual utility data have already identified significant cost-saving opportunities and operational efficiencies.  For example, one analysis using our ENER-i™​ tool identified the potential for an estimated $420,000 over a decade for over 500 homes located on a single distribution circuit.

That’s just the beginning.  Our job is to improve on and offer a platform to utilities that will enable them to address this increasingly complex space, and help create more robust, decentralized, and optimized power grids.

The ‘smart grid’ will soon exist everywhere.  At EPE, our mission is to help utilities make that smart grid as intelligent, efficient, and easy to manage as it possible can be.

For more information visit https://www.epeconsulting.com/

We invite you to stop by and see us, so we can show you how EPE helps the utility of today address the challenges of tomorrow.