INDUSTRIAL CUSTOMERS PARTICIPATING IN THE DEREGULATED TEXAS ELECTRIC MARKET'S ELECTRIC RELIABILITY COUNCIL OF TEXAS (ERCOT) UTILIZING DASHBOARDS TO INTEGRATE REVOLUTIONARY WEB-BASED SOFTWARE SOLUTIONS AND ENTERPRISE SYSTEMS

摘要

Today a select and innovative group of manufacturing plants utilize visualization technologies to display "Electronic Dashboards" enabling them to participate in supply and demand response opportunities. These dashboards are where innovative plant energy personnel receive web-based signals such as hourly plant utility costs (electric, natural gas, etc), and display of real time metrics, including demand-response measures, forecasting energy consumption per pound and measurement & verification (M&V) of integrated supply/demand strategies. Manufacturers competing in global markets require visualization technologies, such as dashboards, to measure energy and operations performance of a manufacturing plant enabling tight control of its energy budget in their pursuit of the prize as "low cost producer." This requires visualization of both the supply-side and demand-side condition in deregulated markets. The integration of web-based visualization software and wireless technologies combined with virtual real-time price signals from Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and demand-response programs market enables sophisticated large industrial energy users to achieve lower costs. From the manufacturing plant's "Device" (Level 1) conductivity whether hard wire or cost effective wireless mesh networks can move two-way TCP/IP information up to the "enterprise dashboard" (Level 2) and out to the web where the distributed "energy team users" (Level 3) can provide the strategy and solutions to achieve the plants objectives. More detail on how data flows between Level 1 and 2 are described later in the solution part of this paper. In the deregulated electricity ERCOT market in Texas an industrial end-user taking advantage of demand-response programs offered by the retail electric providers (REP) can save significant costs on electricity (USD10/MW to USD20/MW). Using the revolutionary software solutions available supporting "fully-open architectures" the plants enterprise system can maintain the visualization of the supply/demand integration vital to the manufacturing plant's operation.