We previously discussed the importance of microgrids in developing a more stable, decentralized electric grid in previous articles. One of the largest bottlenecks in developing a microgrid for a large number of homes and businesses is the time and capital necessary to plan the construction of these projects baesd on each organizations specific goals.

Xendee is a business-to-business microgrid modeling tool that largely solves this problem. It serves energy companies focused on developing microgrids for clients. Their tool has been used and recognized by major names in the space, including the Idaho National Laboratory and the Department of Defense. I believed it would be a great learning opportunity for myself and readers of this blog to learn how this tool works and how it effects the workflow of a typical microgrid development project.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet with Kelsey from Xendee to learn more about their product and ask several questions about its applications and functionality. My hope is to summarize some what she explained to me here.

Kelsey broke down the typical work flow in a microgrid project into four steps:

1. Data Collection

2. Economic Design

3. Bill of Materials and Power Analysis

4. Optimizations to Plan based on Power Analysis

Each of these steps are essential in planning and developing a microgrid for any business or home. Data collection provides crucial information about the client’s energy usage using their utility bills and load profiles. From their, economic design includes feasibility study to examine if building a microgrid would even help a company or organization meet its energy goals in a reasonable period of time. The bill of materials and power analysis allows for a businesses technical team to smoothly transition to considering the specifics of implementing a microgrid system for a business. Finally, further optimizations can be made to the technical design of the microgrid system based on the power analysis models developed. Xendee greatly simplifies each stage of this workflow using intuitive optimization models. This allows energy businesses to serve more clients, giving more businesses the opportunity to consider a transition to renewable energy.

The background optimizations run by solving multi-integer linear programming(MILP) problems to optimize for one or more of different objectives. These include everything from reducing the electricity bills to reducing net carbon emissions. Xendee’s powerful optimization algorithm also account for several different inputs from the impact of geographic weather conditions on the efficiency or various renewable generators(using NREL’s PVWatts Simulation) to the initial and maintenance costs for hardware. If you’d like to learn more about linear optimization, there is a fantastic textbook on the subject in the reading list section of the website.

The Xendee team is made up of experienced experts in the domain of power analytics and energy modeling. The core executive team is made fully made up of technical founders with a deep understanding of the field they’ve entered. Over the last three months I’ve been following the company’s updates, I’ve seen the software consistently grow more advanced with new features continuously being implemented to build even more powerful and versatile microgrid models.

I firmly believe that Xendee will play an important role in the proliferation of microgrid systems in small businesses across the United States. I am excited to watch where Xendee goes in the future, and I will be keeping a watch on their development.