What is GETS?
Grid–Interactive Electric Thermal Storage or “GETS” is a leading technology created, patented, and branded by Steffes for people who want more renewable electricity and lower bills. Steffes GETS is the most sophisticated, high-tech version of Grid-Interactive Water Heating, known in the electric utility industry by the acronym of “GIWH.” Our GETS system creates a highly flexible load with real-time control, optimizing the entire electric system creating equity for all stakeholders.
Steffes Dynamic Dispatch™
In our form of GIWH, a patented GETS backbone system known as Steffes Dynamic Dispatch™ leverages the Microsoft Azure Cloud to aggregate groups of specially equipped water heaters. Steffes Dynamic Dispatch™ precisely controls a large fleet of water heaters and makes them appear to the system operator as a single flexible fast-ramp asset (a virtual generator or battery). Real-time control enables pinpoint fleet control thereby precisely matching instantaneous requirements of electric grid with the needs of all hot water end consumers. Grid operator visibility, second-to-second fleet responsiveness, and aggregate control of a fleet of water heaters carries much more value to regions with higher growth and penetration rates of renewable generation such as in Hawaii.
GETS technology for Residential Energy Storage in Hawaii
After several years of successful field trials and pilots to prove both our market readiness as well as our ability to deliver fast grid and ancillary services, Hawaiian Electric chose our GETS technology for its first behind-the-meter (or grid-edge) residential energy storage. Besides its market readiness and cost-effectiveness, one of the most compelling aspects of our GETS Energy Storage System was our ability to aid in renewable energy integration. In Hawaii, 40% of a typical residential demand profile is for water heating so, the flexible load that we create is both sizable and ideally suited to help Hawaiian Electric deal with issues stemming from mid-day over generation of solar energy. When used as a solar water heating system, GETS adds demand at just the right time to both buffer and soak up the bountiful amounts of solar energy flooding into the grid.
The Hawaii market has reached a level of rooftop solar that far surpasses any state or utility anywhere else in the US. In order to tackle that challenge the Hawaiian Public Utility Commission issued an order on October 12, 2015 to support further sustainable growth in the market for rooftop solar systems and other distributed energy resources (“DER”) by including ways for “customers to save money by shifting energy demand to the middle of the day to take advantage of lower-cost solar energy.”
The Steffes GETS Energy Storage System is both an ideal and a proven way to accomplish that.