By providing a novel new way for connected energy systems to communicate and cooperate, this technology increases the ability to incorporate renewable energy sources at scale and allows for “islanding” of grid hubs to increase resilience and provide enhanced peak energy management capability.
RPSi is working with a solar development partner in Minneapolis.
Four solar-powered microgrids will be installed and the solar energy produced in each will be directed to separate behind-the-meter (battery) energy storage systems. The solar generation and energy storage systems will initially function as four separate microgrids. These four microgrids will then be paired with four RPSi inverters and operated as an aggregated network. The inverters’ performance will be tested under various use scenarios to demonstrate the grid-forming capabilities of the technology.
These microgrids will be designed in a modular manner for future off-grid microgrid testing and educational uses at the completion of the demonstration project.
Traditional inverter technology is designed to be “grid-following”, which limits its ability to support sustainable grid development and modification. RPSi’s inverter utilizes “grid-forming” technology, allowing it to effectively manage an increasing number of decentralized, renewable energy sources on the grid. This capability can be used to maintain grid stability, create resiliency hubs, accelerate the integration of renewable energy sources, enhance the performance of virtual power plants and offer flexible energy infrastructure applications where they are currently limited by grid-following inverter capability.
For the demonstration project, a controlled interaction between a solar panel, an inverter, and a battery, will create a building-level microgrid(s) with the RPSi patented inverter technology. Since it utilizes the power connection between the inverters to self-synchronize the overall system, which is a naturally-occurring phenomena, the system does not require a formal control system. However, the system will be monitored by a data collection system.
The system is scalable and can manage multiple power dispatch scenarios between the components, allowing for testing of behind the meter scenarios and scalability of the technology. The demonstration project will test several performance parameters, including increased grid resilience, grid-fringe services, and reducing emergency scenarios requiring back-up generators or time-sensitive maintenance to power lines.
Grid Catalyst
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email nina@gridcatalyst.org
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all of the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside of it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers), both for Windows and for MAC users.
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs, there may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to nina@gridcatalyst.org