As the year comes to a close, we’re reflecting on an incredible year of progress at encoord. 2024 has been more than just advancing SAInt, it’s been about fostering collaboration, sharing knowledge, and empowering the energy planning community to take on the challenges of today and tomorrow. From impactful projects and SAInt updates to new community-focused spaces, we’re proud of what we’ve accomplished together.
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SAInt Use Cases and Projects
Major Use Cases
Integrated Planning for Utilities: With SAInt, utility planners and engineers integrate planning across electric generation, transmission, and distribution by seamlessly transitioning between balanced and unbalanced AC power flow simulations and production cost optimizations. SAInt also integrates electric and gas infrastructure planning. Engineers perform hydraulic simulations of gas pipeline networks with any gas composition, including hydrogen.
Asset and Technology Evaluation: With SAInt, developers quantify the value and risks of new projects by running capacity expansion and production cost optimizations. In the same modeling platform, they can also assess infrastructure impacts through physical simulations.
Projects
HYPERGRYD: encoord has been participating in HYPERGRYD, an EU-funded project with 19 partners across seven countries. The project’s aim is to develop scalable solutions for integrating renewable energy into thermal grids.
In 2024, encoord enhanced SAInt with advanced thermal modeling and electric-thermal integration, and also supported innovative energy planning at ENVI Park (Italy) and Sonnenplatz (Austria).
FLEXIndustries: encoord assessed industrial flexibility impacts on the EU energy system and fostered collaboration between US and EU experts through webinars, advancing innovation in green ammonia, steel, and flexibility measures.
NSF SBIR: encoord conducted 41 expert interviews to explore reliability assessment needs, sharing key insights at the ESIG conference to expand industry alignment. Additionally, we developed dynamic simulation solvers and an autoadaptive controller framework, significantly enhancing modeling accuracy and efficiency.
ESIG Integrated Planning Guidebook: encoord reviewed over 50 pieces of literature related to integrated planning and participated in three ESIG Integrated Planning Task Force meetings. Additionally, more than 10 interviews were conducted with domain-specific integrated planning experts to deepen understanding and gather valuable insights.
SAInt Releases
This year saw two major SAInt updates designed to both expand and connect energy planning.
SAInt 3.5 was packed with significant enhancements and new features:
Enhanced visualization through georeferenced maps with Google and Bing, in addition to OpenStreetMaps
Improved performance and faster scenario execution for better large-network handlings
Enhanced energy storage modeling
SAInt 3.6 marked our first release of SAInt dedicated to connecting our growing community, including the release of the SAInt Community.
SAInt Community
The launch of the SAInt Community has been an exciting addition, including:
Public Documentation: Open access to comprehensive guides, tutorials, and resources for energy planners.
User Forum: A space to connect with other energy planners, share workflows, explore datasets, and get answers to important questions.
SAInt Tutorial Videos: Quick, targeted lessons covering essential workflows.
SAInt Free Trial Program
We were excited to introduce the SAInt Free Trial Program this year, allowing users to:
Explore and try SAInt’s powerful features
Connect with the SAInt Community
Access public documentation, model-ready datasets, and tutorial videos
Learn more and sign up for the SAInt Free Trial Program here.
Events and Selections
In 2024, encoord traveled across the globe to present on important research and use cases:
Events:
E-World - Essen, Germany
ESIG Spring Technical Workshop - Tucson, AZ, USA
Gurobi Energy Innovation Summit – Frankfurt, Germany
JUMPP Clean Energy Investment Conference – Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Wires Group [CB1] Spring Member Meeting – Chicago, IL, USA
FERC Software Conference – Washington, D.C., USA
Forschungsgesellschaft Energie – Aachen, Germany
EPRI ISP Workshop – Los Angeles, CA, USA
ESIG Fall Technical Workshop – Providence, RI, USA
Selections:
Darcy Partners Top 10 Innovator: Power & Utilities
Colorado OEDIT Early-Stage Capital and Retention Grant.
Cheers to another great year!
Thank you to our customers, partners, and the energy planning community for making 2024 such a successful year. Your feedback, collaboration, and support have helped us drive our mission forward. As we look to 2025, we’re excited to continue innovating, connecting, and empowering the energy industry to plan the energy future.
Follow us on LinkedIn to stay updated on what’s next or sign up for our email list to stay in the loop.
Here’s to another great year ahead!
– The encoord Team