Gurobi Announces Collaboration with Quanta Technology

BEAVERTON, Ore. – December 13, 2022 – Gurobi Optimization, creator of the world’s fastest mathematical optimization solver, announces its collaboration with Quanta Technology, a technical consulting and advisory service company that specializes in the electric power and energy industries.

Grid modernization and the deployment of distributed energy resources (DERs) are driving major shifts in power distribution planning. Quanta’s DER Valuation Tool (DERVT) leverages the Gurobi Optimizer to allow users to compare non-wire and wire solutions to find ways to optimize distribution and infrastructure upgrade investments.

As a Gurobi Alliance partner, Quanta’s deployments of their innovative application also introduce users to Gurobi’s powerful optimizer. Jason Morris, Gurobi Account Director for Power and Utilities, explains the Gurobi Alliance approach: “Gurobi is focused on delivering the best solver in the industry and expanding the adoption of optimization for better decision intelligence in the utility industry. Our partners deliver end-to-end solutions that demonstrate the value of optimization enabled by the Gurobi Optimizer. DERVT brilliantly leverages optimization to help utilities make the best decisions for their stakeholders. We’re excited to promote and support the Quanta solution.”

To identify the optimal solution to complex problems for their clients, Quanta needs a solver that can handle many variables and constraints, well beyond the limits of the open-source solvers that Quanta initially tried. With Gurobi, Quanta can build models around achieving objectives rather than trying to fit them into the capabilities of the free solver. Quanta has found that Gurobi identifies solutions 10X faster than open-source solvers, while also addressing a wider range of problems.

Working collaboratively with utility customers, experts from Quanta and Gurobi improve implementation quality and time-to-value. Khash Mahani, a principal engineer on Quanta’s Advisory Services Team, explained how their customers benefit from DERVT.

“Some use our tool in their regulatory filings, when they want to look at different non-wire alternative solutions for some projected problem,” said Mahani. “Others use our tool to evaluate requests for proposals and see which one is the best, most feasible option.”

In the future, Quanta plans to use Gurobi to expand DERVT to add in different aspects of planning, such as renewable hosting capacity.

“I would rank Gurobi as one of the very best solvers that I’ve used so far,” said Mahani. “It brings flexibility in many aspects, in terms of speed and the range of the problems we can solve and constraints we can have in our models, so I would definitely recommend it to someone looking for a solver.”

To learn more about Gurobi’s partnerships, visit www.gurobi.com/gurobi-alliance/work-with-a-partner/.