Dispatch Schedules
MiraLink provides a mechanism to schedule or control a site generator for an event. This could be necessary for scheduled outages, load shedding, testing and maintenance, as well as for Demand Response events executed at the utility level. The latter is an important use case in grid services as blocks of capacity become monetized across the ecosystem.
Utility-program Demand Response events are common at the residential level in the summer when A/C usage is high in the United States. In the future, participants may include industrial and commercial customers as well as consumers enrolled in additional peak demand programs.
To enable equipment for scheduling, the equipment must have Dispatch configured for your instance. If this is not set up, please contact Support for assistance and configuration.
See also Group Dispatch setup for supporting detail.
Schedule Equipment Dispatch
Start by navigating to the Map View to choose a Site that you manage. Sites can also be selected from the drop-down menu at the top of the page.
The application will display a list of equipment for the site along with any active alarms (not shown).
To view equipment detail, click on an equipment row (not shown).
Click the Schedule tab.
The application displays Pending, Active and Historical events.
To schedule an event, click the Add button.
An entry for Description field is required by the application in the scheduling modal.
Use cases may include scheduled outages, maintenance, load shedding, or Demand Response events to address any utility program requirements. Once these are utilized on the platform they may be cached for autofill in subsequent sessions.
Select Immediate to start the generator engine once this modal is saved. Select the Future toggle to schedule an event.
A setpoint can be added to the event. We’ll come back to this.
In the event schedule (see Future toggle), enter a Start Date/Time or select one using the calendar and clock icons. You will need to select the date, time, and AM or PM.
Using the clock icon, the hour you select must be in the future. End times selections will default to half hour increments starting with the time the modal is launched.
Event duration cannot exceed 12 hours.
Optionally, if you have analog setpoints, enter the start and end values required. The capture illustrates an analog setpoint potentially conforming to a baseline load valid at the times configured here. Units are in kW (implied).
Click Save.
The application adds the event and displays a schedule in the Pending section.
See also the next section for dispatch modifications and cancellations.
To view schedule details, click a row of the scheduled run and the application will render the information on screen.
When the equipment dispatches, the pending event moves to the Active section. During the scheduled event, you can view the equipment activity in the Live Equipment Detail View.
Once dispatch completes, the events move to the History section with a type of Executed.
Modify or Cancel Scheduled Dispatch
Pending dispatch schedules can be edited or cancelled at any time from this screen.
Modify/Edit Events
While on the Schedule view, for a pending or active event click the Edit icon in the Edit column.
Select the new date/time criteria for the event.
Confirm by clicking Save.
The application displays the newly selected criteria for the event.
All criteria for a pending event can be modified. However, for active events, only the end date time can be modified.
Cancel or Stop an Event
If you want to stop an active run, click the Stop button from the Active section. When necessary, future events are cancelled from the Pending section.
Click the Cancel or Stop icon.
Confirm by clicking Ok.
The application cancels the scheduled event and displays the cancellation in the schedule history.
Event History
Cancelled and executed events populate the History section of the page. Page filtering options are available for users with frequent events.
To update the number of entries that the user calls for History:
Click on the Entry count field in the History section to control the number of entries that are returned across the lower tabs.
You can choose a value by using the presets or select Custom.
Type a new value.
Up/down arrows are available to make smaller changes. Up to 300 records are supported.
Notes and Highlights
The Schedule tab is visible once equipment has been configured with a Dispatch control point.
Equipment setpoints can be configured to set analog values at the start and end of the event.
Start Date/Time must be a future date/time.
End Date/Time must be greater than the start date/time. Duration cannot exceed 12 hours.
The timezone displayed corresponds to the configured site timezone.
Different site equipment can be scheduled with overlapping times.