The Spirit of Innovation and DER Orchestration

This blog was originally published on LinkedIn.

“Are Australia and New Zealand poised to teach the rest of the world about the Energy Transition?” Someone asked me this question just before GE Power's Digital Energy APAC User Conference. Thinking about my answer, and talking to people at the event in Sydney, I do see us contributing and leading in certain areas—especially distributed energy resources (DERs).

This small market has a big appetite for innovative solutions and using the latest technology. People here are excited to be early adopters and want to discover new ground. That sets us up to offer lessons learned to others around the world.

 It’s an exciting time. Our customers are already engaged in many different types of distributed generation (DG) projects, and we’re looking to work with them to increase their ability to adapt to DERs. Australia and New Zealand may be ahead in dealing with this energy transition—thinking, planning, and piloting—which is similar to what we’re seeing in other parts of our region. Both GE and non-GE customers in the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam, for instance, are looking for solutions to help manage distributed energy resources, and we plan to showcase the best of our DER Orchestration offerings at this year’s user conference.

After all, the challenges are global. Massive cost is associated with expanding networks and increasing loads. DER Orchestration solutions facilitate the opportunity for the utility to delay some of that investment by optimizing the usage and delivery of power. Leveraging digital technology, the utility can take full advantage of increased efficiencies in the existing network, without having to invest right away in a new transmission or distribution line, or other network expansion.

Australia’s current distribution grids are managing to provide reliable power; however, in certain circumstances they are being pushed to new limits. With DER Orchestration solutions, energy players can optimize their grids by using all the energy currently available. It’s about getting the most out of the installed assets and leveraging DG/DERs. Otherwise, it’s potentially just throwing money at new assets without completely using the operational assets.

Rather than taking on a massive evolution, DER Orchestration software solutions positively impact the grid as the market rapidly shifts to include prosumers, aggregation, peer-to-peer trading, and microgrids.

There’s little doubt that over the next five years we’re going to see a big play in storage and renewable generation. The battery storage, or other innovative storage solutions, on the immediate horizon will only sweeten the situation by allowing utilities to optimize even further, generating electricity at low cost and using DER Orchestration solutions to more efficiently manage load.

It’s exciting that we’re using the grid and technology to help society move forward. GE’s solution is presenting new opportunities for utilities, entrepreneurs, and others with that spirit of innovation.

With our significant investment in the energy market, we’re always increasing our products’ capabilities across the space. Our Digital Energy portfolio offers more than single solutions that solve particular problems. We are orchestrating our technologies in substations, edge devices, renewable generation infrastructure, EMS, ADMS, GIS, mobility, and more to bring complete awareness and control to the utilities. We bring a depth of knowledge and experience that shows our customers we have technology that’s going to keep up with ongoing disruption in the energy sector—and the spirit to innovate and explore.