Engineering firm Costain has launched a new venture called COdemand which it expects to deliver revenue and carbon savings to its clients in the water industry.
COdemandwill provide demand response services - where energy users adjust their demand for energy to help manage fluctuations in available power on the grid – to Costain’s customer base.
The first solution being brought to market, in conjunction with partner Open Energi, is a new system that fine-tunes organisations’ power consumption and provides more flexibility for managing the electricity network.
System turns equipment into "smart assets"
The Open Energi system, known as Dynamic Demand, uses a combination of software and metering technology to attach to machinery such as water pumps, motors, aerators, heaters and fans. Operating through a Tridium controller, it adjusts the power consumption of an asset in accordance with changes to grid frequency, effectively turning them into ‘smart assets’.
Power transported by National Grid has to be balanced to within a statutory frequency limit of 49.5 to 50.5 Hertz. If grid frequency drops, additional power needs to be generated, which costs money and produces more CO₂.When Dynamic Demand detects a change in frequency, it automatically adjusts the power consumption of assets under its control.
The technology is already in action on the UK canal network. Pumps along the Kennet & Avon canal – which send the equivalent of 9,000 Olympic sized swimming pools back to the top of hills after the movement of boats through locks has brought the water down the slopes – are responding to as many as 10 ‘events’ each day.
When UK electricity demand peaks, the pumps automatically turn off for a few minutes, and when we don’t use as much electricity as National Grid expected, they turn on. The service is invisible because the pumps are only turned off or on for a matter of minutes at a time.
Claire Baker, Costain’s Sustainability Solutions Manager, said:
“Dynamic Demand is the first of a portfolio of ‘demand response’ solutions to be fielded under the umbrella brand-name of COdemand. We are extremely excited and see tremendous opportunity in the delivery of this solution to help our customers reduce their exposure to future energy price rises by earning revenue from managing their assets in a smart and sustainable way."
"With our water sector customers specifically we see a great opportunity to deploy this technology on the blowers, pumps, aerators, motors and any other industrial plant. “There is also the added benefit that, once installed, we will have sub-second data about the operating cycle of every asset, which will enable us to help customers manage and optimise their asset base even more effectively; it’s amazing what can be discovered when you shine the spotlight on every asset.”