Daniella Piper, Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation Officer at the New York Power Authority (NYPA), recently detailed how NYPA’s utilization of a “digital twin” has benefited the public power utility.
She made her comments at the Smart Electric Power Alliance’s Energy Evolution Summit in Washington, D.C., which took place May 18-20.
“NYPA utilizes digital twins of our generation and transmission assets and is now developing a digital twin of the NY state grid at the Advanced Grid Innovation Laboratory for Energy (AGILe). These digital twins allow us to optimize our assets and integrate emerging technology more quickly into the grid,” she said.
“At NYPA, we’re committed to delivering innovative energy solutions in the most affordable way,” Piper said.
“When we think about optimizing the grid, we first need to optimize our existing assets, which we do by leveraging asset data. For that reason we have deployed sensors extensively across NYPA’s assets,” she noted.
“We perform analytics utilizing the sensor data,” she said, noting hydro turbines as an example. “Being able to collect all the data from those assets and model a digital twin allows us to better understand the health and performance of our assets,” the NYPA executive said.
Secondly, as the grid transforms, we have to think about how we integrate innovative solutions without compromising the grid. Our digital twin of the NYS grid allows us to derisk emerging technology and accelerate speed to market by integrating them into a virtual representation of the grid.
“As an example, dynamic islanding is going to be a necessary tool as we increase the penetration of distributed assets on the grid. Digital twins such as the one being developed at AGILe allow us to model these scenarios and ensure a resilient grid under these operating conditions,” she said.
As grid operations become more dynamic – flexible assets such as hydro are increasingly important.
She noted that as NYPA built these digital twins and gathered the underlying data, it discovered that the assets are performing differently than expected.
They’re demonstrating significantly more flexibility and are being asked to ramp in ways they weren’t originally designed for.
This is becoming a defining feature of the future grid -- one that increasingly relies on the adaptable capabilities of these assets to respond to system changes and the growing presence of intermittent resources, she said. "Digital twins allow us to understand and respond to that change."
Piper noted rapid technological changes prompted NYPA to establish AGILe, a virtual representation of the New York State grid, which provides a close-to-real testing environment for emerging technologies.
According to NYPA’s website, AGILe is not just a lab; it’s a hub of innovation and discovery. Here, we are creating the first-ever digital twin of the New York State electric grid, a revolutionary tool that will transform how we tackle decarbonization challenges. This digital twin provides a precise, comprehensive representation of the state’s electric grid. It allows us to analyze future scenarios and test new technologies in a risk-free environment before they are deployed in the field.
