mPrest and US based premier energy provider Southern Company have partnered to develop and implement a solution to further enhance the resiliency and flexibility of Southern Company's distribution system.
Image: mPrest to partner with Southern Company for grid modernization applications. Photo: Courtesy of Julie Elliott-Abshire/FreeImages.com.
mPrest’s intelligent grid “System of Systems” applications directly address the challenges of the evolving energy industry, which include rapidly decentralizing networks, sharp changes in energy demand, extreme weather events and cyber security threats.
As the first step in the partnership, Southern Company and mPrest were awarded a grant from BIRD Energy, a program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Israeli Ministry of Energy, jointly with the Israel Innovation Authority and managed by the Israel-U.S. Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation, to develop a distribution product that turns grid-edge devices into fully integrated tools for enhanced management at the edges of the electric grid.
Distribution technologies like this allow for optimal distribution energy management, resulting in energy and cost savings and reliable integration of distributed energy resources.
Southern Company operations executive vice president Stan Connally said: “Southern Company remains at the forefront of technology innovation for energy production, delivery and use. Our partnership with mPrest allows us to increase grid flexibility and improve on products and services we provide to our customers and communities.”
mPrest Chief Commercial Officer Ron Halpern said: “With the evolving expectations of savvy U.S. utility customers, we are excited to be collaborating with Southern Company to integrate advanced grid technology.
“Our products are leading the smart energy revolution and enabling utilities to take full advantage of the emerging capabilities of the industrial IoT. The result will be a smarter, more resilient grid that uses data to manage and leverage existing assets and infrastructure.”
Halpern added: “mPrest’s ‘System of Systems’ is based on dynamic and flexible micro-services architecture, enabling rapid interface of legacy systems, combined with advanced analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning to provide far greater real time and predictive intelligence and situational awareness.
“mPrest’s vendor agnostic applications not only reduce power outages and predict asset failure, but they also enable utilities to respond to real-time changes, reduce operational investments, improve security, facilitate integration of distributed energy resources (DERs), and other customer enabling technologies.”
Source: Company Press Release.