ITHACA, NEW YORK – Bigwood Systems, Inc. (BSI) announced today that it was awarded $420,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). Bigwood placed top 2 overall in Challenge 2 as part of ARPA-E’s Grid Optimization (GO) Competition, which is a series of challenges focused on developing solutions to create a more reliable, resilient, and secure American electricity grid.
“We (at BSI) have been eager to deploy our innovative grid optimization technology against the best and brightest minds in the power industry and are very happy with the results!”, said Dr. Hsiao-Dong Chiang, Cornell University professor and President of Bigwood Systems.
BSI has been providing electric power companies across the world with field-proven software for operations and planning. The BSI team has decades of experience in developing real-time analysis and optimization software for electric power utilities throughout the US and the world. Experience in working with large electric system operators who handle power markets has helped BSI compete in this domain.
BSI’s prize money will be used to further develop their approach and to pursue industry adoption of their innovative technology.
According to a Federal Electric Regulatory Committee (FERC) study, “a good ACOPF solution technique can potentially save tens of billions of dollars every year”, a goal that inspired BSI to further develop grid optimization methods. BSI and its sister company, Global Optimal Technology (GOT), joined the efforts in Challenge 2 to bring a combined over 45 years of experience in power grid optimization expertise to the challenge problem. The team was able to leverage its own internally developed proprietary technology such as Trust-Tech Optimization, the feasible region technique, and homotopy-based methods. The team was also able to leverage the global convergence technology previously developed by BSI. These innovative methods, combined with power grid domain knowledge and expertise, led to BSI’s successful results in Challenge 2. The impact of this ACOPF solution technique can truly reach the goal of saving tens of billions of dollars every year by optimizing the complex grid.
For additional information about Bigwood Systems and this project, please visit www.bigwood-systems.com.
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Bigwood Systems, Inc. (BSI) is well recognized as a world leader in developing innovative software tools for power grid assessment, monitoring, and optimization to provide its utility customers with effective solutions that support the highest quality of reliable, safe, and sustainable electrical power. BSI has an exceptional track record in developing control center software applications for large electric system operators and utility organizations around the world.