Electricité de France Will Be Host EPRI Smart Grid and DER Project

The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has selected Electricité de France (EDF) as the site of the fifth Smart Grid Demonstration host site. The EDF site will develop a a distributed energy resource (DER) controller involving demand response, storage, distributed generation, and renewable generation.  The demonstration will also be the first to exclusively use IP-based WAN communications and security.  The EPRI Smart Grid Demonstration Initiative is a five-year collaborative research effort to design, implement, and assess challenges associated with distributed energy resources and create a “virtual power plant.”

   Quick Take: Virtual power plants and DER are becoming quite a trend, although you might not know it from the the mainstream media.  Right now the noise from the stimulus plan and AMI projects are drowning that out. But we’re aware of a lot of companies working quietly in the background on DER-related projects.

   EPRI Smart Grid Demonstration Project site