What Everyone Should Know About OpenADR

As the energy industry moves towards a cleaner future, new smart solutions are needed to manage increasingly volatile industrial complexes. To maintain availability and ensure reliability of supply, energy providers must use industry standards to manage increasingly distributed reservoirs of energy resources (DERs).

Summary:Electric vehicles act as a decentralized energy source and thus become part of a larger ecosystem, along with decentralized renewable energy production, demand and energy storage responses. This is an important feature of the energy system of the future: it is easier for the toll point manager to participate in demand response programs using OpenAdr.

What is a demand response?

Demand Response is a system used by network managers to reduce network load during peak periods. Demand Response (DR) proactively reduces energy consumption in response to grid conditions such as prices, financial incentives, and utility directives to maintain reliable service and avoid high electricity prices. This makes the power system more efficient and reduces energy costs.

Types of Demand Response Programs

Demand response relies on two main mechanisms: price-based programs that use price signals and accounts to nudge consumers to change consumption, and incentive-based programs that maintain flexibility through direct payments to consumers who change their demand in response to changes in demand. Energy providers and city councils are increasingly recognizing that it is cheaper to pay consumers to reduce consumption through disaster recovery programs than it is to build infrastructure.

• Prices depend on the time of use as follows: When the cost of electricity is higher during peak hours and lower during off-peak hours.
• CRITICAL - PEAK Pricing: Similar to time-of-use pricing, but based on a few peak days per year rather than a daily peak period.
• Real-time pricing: encourages consumers to use wholesale electricity prices that fluctuate based on supply and demand, allowing consumers to save when prices are high.
• Capacity Delivery Programs: Provide customers in retail and wholesale markets with the opportunity to receive payments in exchange for energy savings required by the utility.
• Rapid DR/ Ancillary Services: Provides incentives for customers to service the load during an emergency response to demand.
• Residential Electric Vehicle Charging Disaster Relief Program: Electric vehicle charging charges have been adjusted to reflect changing consumption rates.
• Current Pricing Program for Public Electric Vehicle Charging: Pricing for Charging at Workplaces or Public Charging Stations with Electricity.

Demand response problem

Lack of a standardized disaster recovery program. This means that each program requires a significant integration effort and complies with the structural and regulatory requirements of a specific geographic region. This dispersion hinders the expansion of DR programs. Utilities need a standardized model of disaster recovery models that can be adapted to their own applications to make customer acquisition easier.

To address this issue, the OpenAdr Alliance was formed in October 2012 to promote open, automated demand response and the associated OpenAdr Alliance, which aims to standardize, automate, and simplify cost-effective energy management and distribution responses. 

What is OpenADR?

OpenAdr provides an open standard demand response interface that allows electricity providers to send AR signals directly to their existing customers using a common language and existing communication channels such as the Internet.

OpenAddr is a messaging protocol between two main bearers, one VTN and one Ven. All communication takes place between the VTN and one or more Vens.

Virtual Upper Node (VTN)

The server is on the utility side and schedules events

Virtual node (ven)

Client receives messages from VTN

• Accepts and responds to facts
• Generates reports
• Demand side resource management

OpenAdr clearly defines the expected behavior when exchanging information about disaster recovery events. It provides energy providers with a standardized way to quickly, reliably and securely communicate prices and events to a wide range of customer-installed equipment, including rooftop solar panels, local energy storage, electric vehicle charging stations and energy management systems. In addition, it communicates with all Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) to manage load, power consumption, and changes in the power characteristics of DER assets.

Benefits of OpenADR

• Increase network reliability: Provide a standardized communications and disaster recovery infrastructure so that utilities and concentrates can manage growing energy demand and distributed energy generation.
• Price Peak Reduction: Helps commercial and industrial customers reduce their exposure to critical price peaks (CPPs).
• Technically indifferent: easy to use with existing protocols and systems.
• Customer Incentives: Encourages customers to participate in a fully automated demand response system.
• Increased business agility: Works with a wide range of energy management systems.

OpenADR and electric vehicle charging

The combination of OpenADR and OCPP protocols can turn electric vehicles into demand-responsive assets that can balance the grid, a major improvement on OCPP 1.6 and 2.0, on which smart charging support is built. When combined with smart charging, electric vehicles become more powerful and flexible than other end-user devices connected to the grid.

OpenAdr deals with signal exchange, while OCPP focuses on management, allowing owners to control and use charging stations remotely. Both protocols must work together to achieve the end goal. Help utility companies build a smart charging ecosystem that can improve grid management, improve energy efficiency, and reduce growth costs.

How to enable charging stations under OpenAdr

In order to use a charging station under OpenAdr, the charging station manager must negotiate with a location interested in managing the station as a demand-responsive asset. Once the conditions are resolved, there are two ways to activate charging stations within OpenAdr.

1. Each charging station registers with the OpenADR virtual upper node server.

2.The central OCPP server registers as an OpenADR Virtual End Node (VEN) with the OpenADR Virtual Top Node (VTN) server and connects to participating charging stations.

In the second scenario, the central OCPP server converts the OpenAdr event signals into valid OCPP charge messages and sends them to the appropriate network charging stations.

Let's take a look at a real-life OpenADR application for electric vehicles: the OpenAdr standard is ideal for price transmission, allowing utilities to set higher power ratings during periods of limited capacity. This allows customers to defer billing when the network is below capacity, or compensate for lower billing with reduced load and subsequent cost savings. OpenAdr also allows the network to optimize and manage the power consumption of charging stations based on changes in the network or price signals transmitted through OpenAdr.

Getting started with OpenADR

Obviously, the development of electric vehicles will accelerate the release of the carbonated sector from taxes. It is also clear that electric vehicles have the potential to become an integral part of the energy system in three main ways.

• Increasing the share of renewable energy sources in the energy balance.
• Saving additional electricity generated from renewable sources
• Electric vehicle battery flexibility to access the system manager and balance supply and demand at any time.

New technologies and standards are enabling consumers to take advantage of the flexibility of electric vehicles; OpenAdr will become the most common standard used in rehabilitation programs in the utility and wholesale markets. Customers will benefit from more vendor products and the opportunity to participate in multiple disasters that reward them for responding to power variability.