Digimarc Corporation

Portland General Electric Company

Conrad Eustis

Geoffrey B Rhoads

Tyler J McKinley

A system and method for storing energy from an electrical grid utilizes a system heat pump at a premises for transferring energy from the grid to a thermal storage reservoir and a premises heat pump that can use the stored energy to provide, for example, heat to the premises. The system heat pump and premises heat pump desirably operate independently of one another so that energy can be transferred to the thermal storage reservoir regardless of whether energy is being withdrawn by the premises heat pump. Plural energy storage systems utilizing respective system and premises heat pumps and thermal storage reservoirs can form a part of the utility customer system with the system heat pumps being operable to shape the load on the electrical grid. A system heat pump can be operated to minimize a customer's bill, or the utility's cost and alternatively to achieve other purposes, depending upon the mode of operation of the system.

Plural heat pump and thermal storage system for facilitating power shaping services on the electrical power grid at consumer premises

Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) tend to be specialized and expensive&#x2014;relegated to only key points in power distribution networks, and are generally reliant on GPS technology. The present disclosure details how any smart meter&#x2014;using wireless communication&#x2014;can perform sub-microsecond-grade synchrophasor measurements. Other aspects concern smart meter-based determination of A, B or C phase of the tri-phase power network. This can involve count-stamp enabling message packets sent to and/or from a smart meter, and then associating such count-stamps to local measurements of power phase by a metrology unit. Once a network of such enabled smart meters and other devices is formed, sub-microsecond metropolitan-wide and entire region-wide synchronizing time standard can calibrate local measurements of power phase, where simple A, B and C phase determination is one low hanging fruit application of such. Low cost aggregate monitoring of metropolitan-wide synchrophasors promises a next chapter of importance for that relatively recent art.

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Portland, OR, United States of America

Conrad Eustis