OPTIMAX® helps smooth the transition to new energy business models by providing clear insight into energy consumption while reducing environmental impact and lowering costs up to 5 percent.
ABB has launched OPTIMAX® for Industrials and Commercials and for Virtual Power Plants, part of the ABB Ability™ Energy Management for sites suite, enabling industrial, commercial and power generation companies to reduce energy costs and site emissions by optimizing the aggregation and dispatch of energy sources.
These offerings especially help large, energy intensive companies, that are increasingly looking for new ways to reduce energy costs and emissions. When they install distributed energy resources (DERs) such as wind and solar, for example, they often lack capabilities to reduce energy cost and site emissions because they cannot adequately measure, monitor or control their energy use.
OPTIMAX® solves these problems by connecting to the distributed energy resources and optimizing their use to achieve reduced energy cost and emissions.
“The energy and grid transformation is driving changes in how electricity is being generated, transported and consumed, with bi-directional energy and information flow having accelerated in the past couple of years,” said Kevin Kosisko, managing director, ABB Power Generation & Water. “OPTIMAX®, part of the ABB Ability™ Energy Management for sites suite, is ABB’s response to those changes for our customers. It is now a lightweight tool, which allows for huge scalability across an enterprise.”
OPTIMAX® is scalable to meet the requirements of a range of users, from those that operate multiple grid-connected assets at multiple sites to those interested in optimizing a single industrial or commercial site.
For industrial and commercial companies that actively manage their power consumption and resources, OPTIMAX® for Industrials and Commercials gives them the opportunity to trade more efficiently with the grid while optimizing their own power consumption and resources, reducing energy costs, and minimizing environmental impact.
OPTIMAX® for Industrials and Commercials allows users to monitor energy use by adding new generation assets into a virtual power pool and aggregating decentralized generation and flexible loads. This aggregation and pooling of assets allows for seamless collection, management and reporting of environmental data related to energy use. The result is that users can automate operation of their generation assets, controllable loads and/or storage to achieve an energy cost reduction of three to five per cent. Additionally, these sites can actively participate in energy markets and demand response schemes.
For those users with control of grid-connected assets, such as vertically integrated utilities, cities and aggregators, OPTIMAX® for Virtual Power Plants coordinates control of networked generation assets by creating a virtual power plant. The operation of each connected unit and the delivery of grid services are economically optimized in real time given system constraints. OPTIMAX® for Virtual Power Plants allows for integrated planning, trading, operating, monitoring, and reporting of power plants, generation units, energy storages and controllable loads.
The new digital solution can also be supported through ABB Ability™ Collaborative Operations, providing access to ABB controls and performance experts that can perform system maintenance, optimization and expansion.
Kosisko concludes, “Increasingly corporations publicly communicate ambitions to minimize carbon impact and they use energy consumption as a key lever to attain this goal. This new solution reflects ABB’s aspiration of enabling a cleaner planet by making sustainable operations more accessible and scalable.”
ABB is a leading provider of integrated power and automation solutions with unparalleled experience in partnering with the energy and water industries, bringing them improved operations and sustainable progress. It delivers integrated and secure digital systems, services and solutions to automate and optimize the performance of conventional and renewable power plants and water facilities.
ABB (ABBN: SIX Swiss Ex) is a pioneering technology leader in power grids, electrification products, industrial automation and robotics and motion, serving customers in utilities, industry and transport & infrastructure globally. Continuing a history of innovation spanning more than 130 years, ABB today is writing the future of industrial digitalization with two clear value propositions: bringing electricity from any power plant to any plug and automating industries from natural resources to finished products. As title partner in ABB Formula E, the fully electric international FIA motorsport class, ABB is pushing the boundaries of e-mobility to contribute to a sustainable future. ABB operates in more than 100 countries with about 147,000 employees. www.abb.com
