Power Assure and ABB technology integrate for real-time power monitoring and automation

Power Assure, Inc., has announced that its Dynamic Power Management (DPM) and Dynamic Power Optimization (DPO) software will integrate with ABB's System 800xA Extended Automation platform to deliver real-time power monitoring and automation, allowing IT adjustments in response to facility-side events.

The solutions are the result of the merger of Ventyx and ABB Network Management offerings - along with the recent acquisitions of Insert Key Solutions and Obvient Strategies. These mergers have enabled the delivery of solutions for the control and management of the total utility value chain from a single trusted supplier.

Ventyx offers the only IT platform allowing clients to close the gap between operations technology (OT) and IT, delivering an integrated software and power automation solution set able to achieve "source-to-socket" smart grid market transformation.

What does this mean for utilities? A Ventyx spokesperson quoted the leading research firm Gartner. "Bridging the IT/OT gap further enables the use of advanced analytics to deliver improved business processes - such as lower costs, reduced risks, better decisions and faster response to new opportunities."

Bridging the IT/OT gap is especially important in data centers, which are interesting to utilities for many reasons. First, they use a lot of power in a small space. Second, there is a lot of inefficiency and spare capacity built into the networks of data centers to support disaster recovery and backup. Third, and most importantly, the compute capacity of a data center can generally be shifted physically without impacting the customer experience.

"Given these unique characteristics, the data center owner can shift their compute load automatically if there is a failure," said a spokesperson for Power Assure in an interview. "They can shift it at will to wherever there are lower energy prices. Or, taking 'demand response' to a new level, they could shift it at the request of their utility for a fee."

This is not without its risks but also holds opportunity for utilities.

"The risk is that someone moves 60MW without telling anyone! What if 60MW popped on to the grid in downtown Manhattan at 3:00 pm on an August afternoon in a heat wave?" the Power Assure spokesperson said.

But by creating an automated way for the utility and data center operator to work together, they can shift around huge amounts of power consumption to wherever the most optimal place is for both parties, and share the benefits. The ability to shift and shed data center load not only increases the energy efficiency of data centers, but gives utilities the ability to move demand on the fly to take up excess electricity generation or prevent shortages.

"Utilities will be able to take this technology to their data center customers as an "enhanced demand response" offering, where the amounts of power being shifted are huge - in the gigawatts - and the potential savings for utilities as well as data center operators is in the billions," the spokesperson said.

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