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Alstom to Help Manage New York City’s Electricity Demand

June 05, 2014 by Jeff Shepard

As part of a Department of Energy Smart Grid Demonstration Project, Alstom Grid has been awarded a contract to deliver Demand Response Management System (DRMS) to Con Edison. Con Edison provides electric service to 3.3 million customers in New York City and Westchester County, New York. Alstom's DRMS, based on its e-terraDRBizNet 3.0 technology, will allow Con Edison to efficiently use consumer loads to manage energy supply and demand, with incentives offered to electricity customers to reduce consumption during periods of peak distribution system demand – such as hot summer days, or to alleviate stress on the distribution system. This demand response management system optimizes existing energy available and paves the way to a reliable grid.

In 2013, with more than 8,300,000 square feet of office space under construction, New York City was one of the fastest growing cities in the U.S. Con Edison has 94,000 miles of underground electric cables, plus another 34,000 miles of overhead wires to serve its customers. As utilities strive to minimize the ongoing extension of infrastructure and optimize existing assets, Alstom's e-terraDRBizNet 3.0 provides the digital intelligence to make fast decisions to compensate energy flow.

"Con Edison needed a robust, open, comprehensive and scalable solution to manage our growing Demand Response activities and data within a single platform. Alstom's DRMS will help streamline our business processes, and efficiently manage and optimize our growing Demand Response portfolio," said Andre Wellington, Project Manager from Con Edison.

"Alstom's DRMS manages the largest demand response portfolio in the world. Today, our e-terraDRBizNet solution enables more than 10,000 MW of demand response, representing over 1,000,000 end-use residential customers and over 10,000 commercial and industrial customers. We welcome Con Edison to our expanding and diverse customer base of utilities, aggregators and Regional Transmission Operators around the world," said Karim El Naggar, Vice President of Alstom Grid's Network Management Solutions.

Alstom's DRMS is a system that integrates residential, commercial and industrial Demand Response programs and device technologies; it can be used from small pilot deployments, such as handling new, initial automated demand response programs, to large industrial-grade DRMS needs, such as efficiently calling on a large complex portfolio of energy resources to address surging demand.