The Power of Change
Spartan Energy Control Systems is a company of electricians that are highly specialized in the agricultural, industrial, and commercial industries with a focus in smart grid projects for electrical utilities. The Spartan crews are service oriented and focus on not only implementing the latest technology, but to provide advance technical support and training on a 24 hour / 7 days a week basis. Spartan has done all of the electrical contracting and field service work for the Idaho Power and PacifiCorp irrigation demand side managed (DSM) programs since 2006. These projects have been executed with features that serve both the electric utilities and the consumer and have involved the installation and service of automated demand response technology at approximately 6,500 sites across the service territories of both utilities.
Problem
Electric utility companies are facing a rapid increase in peak energy demand and the associated costs and reliability issues. The unique issue is a large portion of load comes from the agricultural industry. This also created a greater disparity between the peaks and valleys of energy usage. If electric utility companies don't have enough assets to manage the peak summer load demand, the result can be decreased power quality and blackouts.
Solution
The simple solution is Spartan Energy Load Control Systems. By providing a state-of-the-art system of hardware and software that electric utility companies can use to create controlled power shutdowns to participating irrigation pumps and pivots during peak load times. In return, owners of the irrigation pumps and pivots are paid for allowing the utility company to shutdown their equipment for the designated time frame.
Results
When Spartan Energy started it's contract in June 2006 for PacifiCorp's Rocky Mountain Power, no one could predict the impact it would have. The first few years we managed to reduce about 200 megawatts of load for each hour of a load control event. In 2010 some of the load control events resulted in over a combined (Both Idaho Power and Rocky Mountain Power) 475 Megawatts being conserved each hour.
The Power of Change
Spartan Energy Control Systems is a company of electricians that are highly specialized in the agricultural, industrial, and commercial industries with a focus in smart grid projects for electrical utilities. The Spartan crews are service oriented and focus on not only implementing the latest technology, but to provide advance technical support and training on a 24 hour / 7 days a week basis. Spartan has done all of the electrical contracting and field service work for the Idaho Power and PacifiCorp irrigation demand side managed (DSM) programs since 2006. These projects have been executed with features that serve both the electric utilities and the consumer and have involved the installation and service of automated demand response technology at approximately 6,500 sites across the service territories of both utilities.
