Energy Toolbase Enables Users to Co-optimize Grid Services and Utility Bill Savings

We are excited to announce a groundbreaking update to Energy Toolbase’sETB Developer product: the co-optimization of grid services and utility bill savings. This enhancement allows solar and storage projects to capitalize on diverse value streams, not only improving overall project economics but also rendering these estimates more reliable and robust. The addition of grid service optimization builds on ETB’s sophisticated modeling technology, which includes:

• Optimization across multiple behind-the-meter value streams
• Rapid creation and application of forecasts during simulation
• Access to our unparalleled utility rates database

Energy Toolbase continues to redefine what is possible with C&I solar and energy storage modeling with this industry-first feature, now available to all ETB Developer subscribers. Our launch starts with Demand Side Grid Support (DSGS), a popular and lucrative California demand response program. We are committed to expanding the set of supported grid services, ensuring that regardless of where our customers are deploying projects, they can leverage this transformative functionality.

The Backstory

Energy Toolbase’s digital twin approach, where the same software and algorithms drive our modeling and real-time execution ensures that our customers benefit whenever we improve either our energy storage system (ESS) simulation, ETB Developer, or our ESS controls, Acumen EMS™, products. We have been participating in several grid services programs nationwide to gain some key insights. Our learnings include:

• The addition of grid services increases overall project economics, but bill savings may be reduced to ensure higher total economic value.
• Some grid service programs are easier to co-optimize with bill savings than others.
• Measurement and verification of grid service participation is unique for each program and requires specific logic to calculate correctly.
• Optimization of grid services and bill savings is difficult to scale manually, Acumen does it quickly and optimally.
• Simple registration processes facilitate better participation rates.
• Easy-to-understand grid services performance reports are critical to transparently communicating program value

We’ve directly integrated these learnings into our software so that your projects can benefit from our experience earlier in the project lifecycle. We are excited to enable our customers to expand the value that they can bring to projects going forward.

Try it out now!

If you don’t have a developer account, sign up for afree trial. An account representative will connect with you to walk through the functionality. Once you’re in the platform navigate to a proposal and add a program:

The app will guide you through any parameters that need to be configured for the program participation. After adding the program, our optimization software will run.

We can see the impact on the dispatch schedule in the ETB Analytics screen. In this screenshot, we can see that at point 1, a DSGS event occurs at 5:00 PM on June 30^th. At point 2, we can see that in response to this event, the battery dispatch begins to capitalize on this event. The dispatch ends when the event ends as well.

We can also see the impact on our project economics. In our testing, we’ve seen marginal projects become economically attractive, and strong projects become home runs! The DSGS revenues are represented in the cash flows in your proposal.

Watch our grid services demohere. To learn more about how you can apply this functionality to your project, register for our upcoming webinarModeling Grid Services and Utility Bill Savings with Energy Toolbase on Wednesday, April 10 at 2 pm EST.