System integrator Wärtsilä has launched its newest energy management system (EMS) platform, while power solutions manufacturer Generac has acquired a company that makes them.
Wärtsilä platform aimed at ‘multi-gigawatt-hour’ projects
The energy storage and optimisation (ES&O) arm of Wärtsilä has launched the seventh generation of its GEMS software platform.
While the monitoring, controls and optimisation platform can serve as an energy management system (EMS) for all manner of energy assets including thermal, renewable energy storage at portfolio, fleet and single asset level, it has its strongest market presence in battery storage.
GEMS 7’s design features partly reflect the growing average size of customer projects in the grid-scale battery energy storage system (BESS) space, the company claimed.
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GEMS Digital Energy Platform—to give the EMS its full monicker—can support equipment from a wide variety of power electronics and battery storage manufacturers. That includes Wärtsilä’s own GridSolv Quantum range of containerised battery storage, the newest iteration of which was launched in March this year.
The platform uses machine learning techniques alongside historic and real-time data analytics to optimise energy assets and balance portfolios.
Its digital capabilities were among the chief reasons why Wärtsilä acquired GEMS’ creator, Silicon Valley-based BESS integrator Greensmith Energy in 2017, using the acquisition to kick off the Finnish marine and energy solutions provider’s energy storage business.
The company said this morning that in response to customer requirements, GEMS 7 is designed to be able to control multi-gigawatt-hour scale BESS plants with fast response times, and at the same time offer visibility into storage assets down to the battery cell level.
Other changes include the addition of new visualisation interfaces for the management of large sites, the ability to ‘partition’ sites down to allocate different revenue-generating applications and controls to enable cell balancing and state of charge (SoC) calibration.
It also has new alarm and remote monitoring management features, module-level data access, and reduced latency for responding to grid frequency events.
“An effective software system meets increasingly short response time requirements, provides ample data for monitoring and analysis to remote asset management teams, and is adaptable to changing grid requirements like synthetic inertia,” Wärtsilä Energy general manager for software product management Ruchira Shah said.
In a 2022 interview with Energy-Storage.news, Wärtsilä ES&O head Andy Tang commented on the ongoing increase in average customer project sizes, which at the time stood at around 100MW/200MWh, Tang claimed, a trend which appears to have continued since.
Generac buys out microgrid controls and EMS provider
New York Stock Exchange-listed backup power generation product manufacturer Generac has acquired Colorado-headquartered microgrid EMS specialist Ageto.
The company announced yesterday (5 August) that the deal to take over Ageto closed at the beginning of the month.
Ageto makes microgrid controllers for systems that combine and integrate different distributed energy resources (DERs), including energy storage and solar PV, as well as other power equipment from conventional generation to electric vehicle (EV) charging.
Ageto microgrid controllers have been incorporated into Generac battery storage system solutions and gensets since 2021, like Wärtsilä’s GEMS suite enabling the control, monitoring and optimisation of assets via a single interface. Its products are primarily aimed at the commercial and industrial (C&I) market.
Generac is best known as a manufacturer of standby generators for home and C&I use, but with business lines in everything from portable power solutions to EV chargers and even pressure washers.
The company entered the battery storage business following the 2019 acquisition of home storage system and inverter manufacturer Pika, subsequently launching its own brand home battery solutions, and forming Generac Grid Services post-takeover of distributed energy tech platform provider Enbala.
The C&I energy storage space has typically been the slowest moving of the three major market segments alongside residential and utility-scale. Research firm Wood Mackenzie found that in Q1 2024, 993MW/2,952MWh of new utility-scale storage was deployed in the US, alongside 252.4MW/515.7MWh of residential installs, but just 19.4MW/44.4MWh of C&I and community-scale storage was deployed in the quarter.
However, fundamental market drivers mean the C&I segment holds strong potential over a 10-year outlook, Wood Mackenzie said in its Q1 2024 US Energy Storage Monitor report.
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