December 1, 2004
Infotility and CSIRO Announce International Collaboration Project using GridAgents Technologies
Energy Flagship begins US research collaboration in Distributed Energy
The Distributed Energy Theme of CSIRO’s Energy Transformed Flagship has signed an agreement with US software firm, Infotility Inc. to collaborate on the development of adaptive, intelligent, agent-based systems designed to manage distributed energy (DE) units.
As part of the collaborative effort, the Flagship’s Management and Control stream – in partnership with CSIRO’s ICT Centre – recently launched an 18-month project which will create agent-based learning solutions to control small local electricity generation units and deliver improved energy usage profiles and demand-side management measures.
The proposed research is into agent-based software which will develop emergent behaviour to govern the way small generators or loads are switched on or off by medium to small consumers of energy. Often these will be treated as an aggregated collection of units – connected via a ’mini-grid’– with a specific energy usage and supply profile.
Aggregation will allow small businesses to participate in Australia’s deregulated National Energy Market which is presently open only to big producers, consumers, and retail and network businesses. A key aim is to alleviate the peak demand problems resulting from air conditioning and other intermittent heavy loads giving rise to network supply constraints and peak prices. The project is also designed to reduce greenhouse gas production by encouraging the wide-scale deployment of distributed electricity generation
San Francisco-based Infotility Inc has been engaged by the US Department of Energy to provide software and architecture for ’Distributed Intelligent Agents for Decision Making at Local Distributed Energy Resource (DER) Levels‘. This project focuses on the analysis and development of the distributed, intelligent-agent-based software system. The system will locally manage and control aggregated DE units in order to address the problems of grid reliability from the perspective of the grid operator. It will also address the problems of capacity from the perspective of the distribution operator, while taking into account and balancing the specific needs of the energy end-users – combined heat and power operation, peak shaving, power quality and reliability, market participation, etc.
As network security is a key driver in the US electricity supply system, the Department is looking for ways to improve participation of small generators and promote demand-side management control through their GridWise Architecture panels. This type of project will be a priority for the next few years.
About GridAgents. GridAgents, an Infotility, Inc. company is the leading provider of real-time Collaborative Stream Processing (CSP) software that monitors and processes streaming data from any source or device, aggregating and coordinating information from multiple sources, assuring accessibility, usefulness, security, and survivability across any network. GridAgents’ software is applicable to any community of smart devices or sensors on the Pervasive Internet in the Sensor-Tagged world, where latency, immediacy, complex analytic/business rules, end-point processing, and security are critical issues, and the overheads of complex database management systems are of concern. GridAgents, with headquarters in Boulder, Colorado, is the major business unit of Infotility, Inc., a software and services company which was formed in 2000.
About CSIRO: The Energy Transformed Flagship is a CSIRO initiative and part of the National Research Flagships program that aims to deliver scientific solutions to advance Australia's most important national objectives. One of the largest scientific initiatives ever mounted in Australia, it aligns closely with the Federal Government's National Research Priorities. The initiative brings together our national research resources to deliver breakthroughs in fields ranging from healthcare to light metals and the environment. For further information please contact:
Geoff James: ICT Centre Marsfield
Terry E. Jones: DET Division Newcastle.
David Cohen : CEO, GridAgents, an Infotility, Inc Company, USA