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Generac Grid Services Announces Support for New Open Standards & User Interface Features to Streamline Delivery of Grid Services

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Concerto™ features support end-to-end security, event design, notification personalization, and enhanced in-app reporting

Generac Grid Services announces the release of its latest Concerto distributed energy resource (DER) orchestration platform. The platform’s newest features enable grid operators to more easily and confidently harness the growing DER capacity within their networks and includes user interface features to simplify the secure provisioning and delivery of grid services. New features include major enhancements for demand response customers, improvements in notification and reporting, and an enriched open standards ecosystem to support CTA-2045 and OAuth2.0.

Concerto provides utilities and other grid operators with an adaptable approach to managing flexible assets on the power grid and underpins the company’s award-winning virtual power plant (VPP) and distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) solutions. The new release includes:

  • Support for OAuth2.0 to help administrators securely grant and monitor API access, and in support of new integrations via Generac Grid Services’ Software Development Kit (SDK):
    • Centrica Business Solutions’ PowerRadar platform for site meter data
    • Icetec platform controlling co-generation and steam chiller facilities
  • Communication via the CTA-2045 standard to expand the network of DER assets able to cost-effectively connect to the Concerto platform, and in support of new integration to:
    • ARA CTA-2045 universal communications module (UCM)
  • Enhanced event description fields to improve record-keeping and support clearer, personalized communications with asset owners
  • Customization of event reminder notifications to satisfy asset owners’ needs
  • In-platform standard and customizable reports to extend the single-pane-of-glass interface for users to monitor, verify, analyze and diagnose performance at the VPP level, down to the asset and site level.
  • New smart inverter asset model to support additional inverter-based DERs; complex, multi-asset configurations and direct current (DC)-coupled solar-plus-storage installations
  • Major demand response use case enhancements including:
    • User interface unified view to provide users with a single, easy-to-understand demand response graph, consistent with other grid services use cases
    • Site participation windows to provide new, program-level constraints for program participants
    • Aggregation of site meter data to enable performance calculations on a per-site basis and enhance reporting and visualization of utility end customers participating with multiple sites
    • New baseline methodology and further enhancements to existing baselines to support new customer program configurations

Generac Grid Services continues to expand support of industry standards such as IEC 60870-5-104, OpenADR, OAuth2.0 and CTA-2045 to help scale demand response and other flexible capacity programs. Concerto’s CTA-2045 support comes as several major water heater manufacturers have active production of devices with a compatible communications port as many states are implementing or considering a mandate that new electric water heaters have a native CTA-2045 communication port.

“As utility demand response programs and other multi-vendor, mixed-asset VPP aggregations are becoming more complex, Generac Grid Services is simplifying the provision of flexible capacity to meet real-time grid needs,” stated Michael Ruth, vice president of product. “New Concerto open standards and user interface features enable grid operators and program managers to scale their strategic use of DERs while remaining confident in the ability to dispatch load and report event results.”

Generac Grid Services was formed primarily through the acquisition of Enbala Power Networks® in October 2020. The Generac Grid Services’ Concerto software solution, built by Enbala, is a vendor-agnostic, open solution for utilities, grid operators, electricity retailers, energy traders and large energy users to monitor, control and optimize DERs.

About Generac Grid Services

Generac Grid Services is a group of Generac, a leading designer and manufacturer of energy technology solutions and other power products. Generac Grid Services is changing the way the world generates and uses electricity. From turnkey solar + storage solutions, to backup generators, additional distributed energy resources and virtual power plant software, Generac Grid Services is accelerating the world’s transition to a cleaner, more reliable power grid. For more information, visit http://www.generac.com and follow the company on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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