Microgrid Technology Increases Uptime and Production for Artificial Lift Equipment
An updated microgrid technology from FlexGen aims to cure the problems that plague artificial lift equipment. (Think: electric submersible pumps, gas lift, and rod pumps). Electrical reliability and power quality problems are all too common and result in high energy costs, grid blackouts, brownouts and lost production.
FlexGen’s microgrid technology, the digitally-enabled FlexGen Production Power Microgrid, automatically delivers or receives precise, high power pulses with millisecond accuracy, essentially cleaning the electrical power flowing to and from the artificial lift motor. For customers, this means significantly increasing uptime and production, reducing artificial lift electricity costs by 40-60 percent for both generator set and grid-supplied sites.
The Production Power Microgrid is the latest product born from the FlexGen Industrial Internet of Things (FiiT) computing platform. It ingests massive volumes of electrical system “fast data” to optimize power system performance.
FlexGen CEO, Josh Prueher said, “Our FiiT platform helped us identify, quantify, and design a solution to an electrical power problem in artificial lift operations that is costing the oil & gas industry over a billion dollars in lost production annually. It’s the latest example of a persistent blind spot in the oilfield – the industry largely overlooks the true costs of electrical power in its engineering designs and operations. These costs hide in very granular electrical data and without our FiiT capability, they would remain invisible.”
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‘Future-Proofing’ the OATI South Campus microgrid
The OATI South Campus microgrid in Bloomington, Minnesota, will have multiple on-site power generation sources in addition to its connection to the local utility. EnSync and OATI, developers of energy management systems for the utility, commercial, and industrial building markets, are finalizing the integration of EnSync’s Matrix Energy Management platform and Agile Hybrid energy storage into the OATI South Campus.
The Matrix Energy Management system and Agile Hybrid battery storage will be integrated into the electrical system to firm PV solar output, store energy from PV and other generation sources to shift building load. The EnSync solution will also provide emergency backup power, enabling transition from grid-connected to island mode without interruption to building occupancy.
The South Campus microgrid will operate in parallel with the electric grid. OATI recently ordered additional Matrix capacity to enable the campus to island from the grid and continue to use premise assets. The building will intelligently and dynamically adjust and optimize its load and generation based upon grid conditions and electricity prices.
“EnSync’s Matrix technology is enabling the future of distributed generation by easily integrating and prioritizing electricity from the grid, from distributed resources and from energy storage, to always ensure the least expensive and most reliable electricity,” said Brad Hansen, president and CEO of EnSync Energy Systems.
The Matrix Energy Management technology is a power controls platform offering modularity and scalability, allowing the addition of a variety of advanced energy generating and storage resources at any time. The Agile Hybrid Energy Storage System takes a hybrid approach to power and energy needs, utilizing lithium ion batteries for quick, short-term power and flow batteries for long-duration energy needs. These features ‘future-proof’ the South Campus: they aim to efficiently and economically accommodate myriad applications, government policies, and technology updates that occur over the life of all generating assets.
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Rivers and Oceans Generate On- and Off-Grid Energy
Dominovas Energy launched a hydroelectric division, Currentergy, which seeks opportunities to electrify developing economies in Africa and Latin America. Its ORCAS (Ocean River Current Access Solutions) system generates electricity from rivers and oceans, enabling both on- and off-grid clean energy: it can power local communities as a microgrid, as well as feed utility grids.
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All-Iron Flow Battery System at California Winery in Net-zero Microgrid
The microgrid at Stone Edge Farm in Sonoma, California, says that its customized (IFB) system is now in operation. The system maximizes the microgrid’s use of renewables and demonstrates how energy storage can drive the 16-acre facility’s carbon footprint below net-zero — even exporting net zero energy benefits to the adjacent community.
“Adding storage to distributed PV enables more solar to be installed behind the meter, where it has more value by reducing demand charges and arbitrating TOU rates, while enabling a better than net-zero footprint for the winery,” said Craig Wooster, microgrid project manager at Stone Edge Farm. “Our investment in this project is to demonstrate the variety of services energy storage can provide such as daytime smoothing of PV, shifting energy to higher demand periods, and eventually offering energy services to the larger external grid.”
The Iron Flow Battery system installed at the Stone Edge Farm microgrid has a 60 kWh energy capacity with a 10 kW, 480 VAC, 3-phase interface. It will receive commands from DC System’s controller responding to specific needs on the microgrid to supply power at night, for irrigation or hydrogen generation, or during the day to smooth out the intermittencies of solar on the microgrid.
ESS’ IFB utilizes earth abundant iron, dissolved in salt water as its energy storage medium. By combining this low cost electrolyte with ESS’ proprietary battery design, ESS’ IFB technology has demonstrated thousands of deep charge/discharge cycles at 70 percent AC/AC round trip efficiency without performance degradation.
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