New York Public Power Community Hosts Smart Grid Chip Pilot Project

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
July 5, 2022

The public power community of Lake Placid, N.Y., is hosting a smart grid chip pilot project involving Utilidata and NVIDIA.

The demonstration project in Lake Placid involves first generation meter adapters installed at customer locations along the circuit that serves the Olympic bobsled complex. The complex uses a lot of power, providing the opportunity to test out the product. Lake Placid hosted the 1980 Winter Olympics.

The smart grid chip captures and analyzes high resolution voltage and current waveform data to provide insights unique to the device’s location on the grid.

Once the meter adapter is installed, data will begin streaming immediately, a video providing details on the project notes. Devices can be moved throughout the project to various areas of interest.

The chips come preconfigured with core services for each pilot partner’s needs, leveraging waveform data, real-time communications and machine learning.

Chris Fadden, Meter Serviceman for the Village of Lake Placid, assisted with the installation of the inline units that Utilidata supplied.  

“It was really just pulling the meter, installing the inline unit and then replacing the meter — about the same as installing a voltage recorder or any other piece of equipment,” he noted in an email.

Patrick Wells, Technical Coordinator for the Village of Lake Placid, said his role was to help pick out the locations for each of the devices. “Every now and then they send me some sample data that I can look at and give recommendations on what format would be best for us. The data they send is interesting and with more I am sure we could do a lot with it.”

The project remains ongoing, he said, and the devices are still operating.

In April 2022, Utilidata, a grid edge software company, announced that it was launching an advisory board with NVIDIA to guide the development and deployment of grid edge software solutions, including its recently announced smart grid chip.