Where federal money goes, chances are Viridity Energy is close by. The Conshohocken company is involved in four projects, including two that have already been funded with close to $250 million in stimulus and Department of Energy grants, that aim to develop smarter electrical grids.
Founded in 2008 by former executives from PJM Interconnection, the regional transmission organization based in Norristown, Viridity is an active–and perhaps Pennsylvania’s most visible–player in microgrids, anticipated to be a $2.1 billion market in the next year. The company also has been involved with projects seeking funding in California and New Mexico and was selected as a finalist in the Innovation Competition run by the popular blog Greenbeat for its VPower System.
“We’re truly at a transformational moment,” says Viridity president and CEO Audrey Zibelman. “When I look around at our utilities, like PECO, they’re beginning to take a serious look at distributed energy resources and making sure they can take the maximum value out of those resources from both a reliability and economic perspective.”
Viridity’s VPower System transforms large energy consumers into round-the-clock virtual power plants, increasing energy efficiency, decreasing energy costs and creating continuous revenue that helps users meet their growth and sustainability goals.
The system uses an advanced software platform to evaluate customers’ overall energy load and optimizes their usage. The goal is to integrate and aggregate customers’ load, storage and on-site generation resources into virtual generation that can be used as reliable resource in the wholesale energy markets and on the grid.
“Fifty percent of our electrical power system, a grid, is everything that happens behind the meter,” she says. “For the last 150 years, we’ve not touched that aspect of the system and now technology and communications are allowing us to make better use of how we consume and produce energy.”
As part of a $200 million grant awarded to PECO, Viridity received nearly $1.2 million to support the implementation of smart grid technologies through its partnership with Drexel University. Viridity is coupling Siemens‘ DEMS (decentralized energy management system) with its VPower system on Drexel’s campus. The project will demonstrate how dynamic load optimization can be used to help PECO create virtual energy generation and showcase the implementation of a two-way interface using secure communications.
Last week, Viridity announced it will work with Con Edison, which was awarded a $45 million grant from the Department of Energy, and the New York Economic Development Corporation to optimize advanced building technologies and solar generation from City-owned properties into clean, virtual power generation in the Big Apple.
Zibelman hopes the Viridity, which employs 14, will grow to up to 50 employees in the next two years and to be involved in 12-20 projects that are “showing the value of its system.”
Source: Audrey Zibelman, Viridity Energy
Writer: Joe Petrucci
