In a recent announcement, Powerside launched its new cloud-based solution for securing the edge of the power grid (grid edge) by delivering fleetwide health analytics. The new QubeScan platform also offers comprehensive management of the company’s PQube 3 measurements and the future range of power analyzers.
The company said that QubeScan is designed to provide grid operators, utilities, co-ops, C&I and customers with greater visibility into power quality at the grid’s edge. The growth in EVs, microgrids, and residential/private renewable power generation makes this kind of visibility critical not just for utilities, but for municipal authorities and emergency services, too.
Reportedly, the platform offers the critical ability to sense, evaluate and proactively act on ever changing grid edge stability and power quality, and the UI offers customizable analytics so users can review and detect events within the system, record and analyze shareable data and configure trend alerts.
“Today, our electrical distribution networks are flying mostly blind when it comes to monitoring the impact of solar, wind, batteries, and EV charging,” said Stephane Do, VP, Products, Powerside, in the release. “Deployment of high-fidelity sensors measuring disturbances at the grid’s edge and real-time analysis of those measurements are essential to ensure performance and reliability during this rapid transformation of our electrical system.”
Recent research from the 2022 US Energy Information Administration (EIA) Outlook indicated that changes in consumer and environmental trends are likely to drive widespread distributed energy resource (DER) deployment and could make up as much as 1.7 trillion kWh of renewable growth by 2050.
Renewable energy and distributed grid (or microgrid) infrastructure are going to require near real-time visibility and faultless accuracy in sensor data in order to enable the growing energy needs of the global population while being nimble enough to rapidly adjust to changing climate. This is critical infrastructure, particularly at the edge of the grid, where instabilities like transients and underlying distortion sources pose risks to equipment.
Solutions like QubeScan are going to be important to attaining the kind of grid edge visibility and remote command-and-control functions that are becoming necessary.
