Managing Energy with Real Time Demand Response
Blog: Jim Sinur
A leading provider of cloud‐based energy intelligence software (EIS) and services to thousands of enterprise customers and utilities globally leverages BPM well. While this company sells EIS for corporate energy management, part of its solution uses discrete software to drive a service called “demand response,” which enables companies to curtail energy usage in exchange for payment from energy suppliers. Examples of curtailing include dimming lights, adjusting the temperature in a store, or shifting a production line schedule to a different time of day.
The Challenge:
As part of its digital transformation, this company needed an automated system to help make the notifications and curtailment process run smoothly and efficiently during demand response dispatches. Using BPM software, they created a call‐and‐answer mechanism to notify providers when they need to start curtailing that triggers a notification back to this organization from the customers’ site that indicates, “Yes, we heard you.” This starts the curtailing process: customers reduce their energy use according to a pre‐set strategy, and this broker monitors the reductions and calculates the resulting payments. Once the dispatch window has passed, the broker sends another notification, alerting providers to stop curtailing and resume normal operations. Anytime a new technology is introduced, there is doubt and resistance. To overcome natural resistance to change, the broker developed a proof‐of‐concept and used it to show employees that it was a much better solution than the previous practice.
The Solution:
Implementing a BPM solution provides an automated process with manual overrides if needed. This changes the human involvement from actively executing the process to monitoring and addressing occasional exceptions through manual overrides. This has eliminated the need for employees to set self‐reminders and has reduced the human error element from the curtailing process. It has also increased the scalability of the brokers demand response infrastructure. Employees now focus on monitoring what’s going on and dealing with exceptions to process automations. Productivity has improved as a result. Employee adoption has been excellent, as the tool itself is an enabler for doing efficient work. Internal demand for BPM is high now as the broker further integrates the software, the company is building an internal program to help define current processes, identify problems and develop new processes.
The Benefits:
The automation and streamlining of the end‐to‐end demand response journey resulted in several levels of benefit. This first step in the digital transformation has set a great precedent for embracing digitization across the board. The operators that are running BPM are able to easily handle more of the traffic that goes through on the days when curtailing takes place than they were prior to the deployment. The company is able to scale better and there is less human interaction in terms of monitoring, reducing human error. The system manages itself. Set it up in advance of an event and it runs through specific programs that previously set up – easy.
The elimination or reduction of human interaction within the orchestrated workflow has reduced the human error that can sneak in. The quality of the curtailment event has improved in that the broker has predictable and well‐execute curtailments during the day. The quality has improved and it is consistent. The BPM has reduced human involvement from active to passive – which is a positive thing.
Net; Net:
BPM allows organizations to scale with lower risk and to grow the business. BPM has helped this broker to stay at the forefront of innovation and deliver on more scalable and efficient promises to its customers.
This is an anonymous and highly summarized case study from Bonitasoft
For more Detail See the Video Here
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