The US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has chosen Mitsubishi subsidiary Smarter Grid Solutions (SGS) to implement a distributed energy resource management system (DERMS).

The Strata Grid DERMS will be at NREL’s Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF).

The ESIF is one of the USA’s premier energy systems integration laboratory facilities focused on development and deployment of clean energy technologies and resilient distribution systems. NREL sought a DERMS capable of replicating utility control and monitoring of distributed devices from small residential systems to the grid substation level.

Example use cases of the Strata Grid DERMS include the autonomous operation and coordination of modern grid devices, leveraging DERs for improved grid planning and operation, and demand-side management and customer engagement through bidirectional communication with utilities and energy market operations.

“SGS is excited to partner with NREL on their research in the DERMS realm,” said Jon Grooters, director of utilities at SGS. “With NREL’s research leadership and SGS’s industry-leading DERMS, we expect to see very interesting and exciting learnings from this partnership.”

Sarah Williams, NREL (www.nrel.gov) ESIF research project manager, added: “DERMS-related research is core to the integrated, multi-disciplinary work happening at ESIF. We have confidence we are developing a powerful toolbox SGS [www.smartergridsolutions.com] to address both existing and future use cases.”

DERMS can enhance control and visibility for utilities and electric cooperatives, allowing their operators to manage incoming renewable energy resources and grid-edge devices for improved reliability, resilience and efficiency of the electrical system.