Power grid integration and use-case study of acid-base flow battery technology

There are many different types of energy storage systems (ESS) available and the functionality that they can provide is extensive. However, each of these solutions come with their own set of drawbacks. The acid-base flow battery (ABFB) technology aims to provide a route to a cheap, clean and safe ESS by means of providing a new kind of energy storage technology based on reversible dissociation of water via bipolar electrodialysis. First, the main characteristics of the ABFB technology are described briefly to highlight its main advantages and drawbacks and define the most-competitive use-case scenarios in which the technology could be applied, as well as analyze the particular characteristics which must be considered in the process of designing the power converter to be used for the interface with the electrical network. As a result, based on the use-cases defined, the ESS main specifications are going to be identified, pointing out the best power converter configuration alternatives. Finally, an application example is presented, showing an installation in the electrical network of Pantelleria (Italy) where a real pilot-scale prototype has been installed

Smart Energy Management for Smart Grids

This book is a contribution from the authors, to share solutions for a better and sustainable power grid. Renewable energy, smart grid security and smart energy management are the main topics discussed in this book

Modelling and Co-simulation of Multi-Energy Systems: Distributed Software Methods and Platforms

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen

A study of the applicability of software-defined networking in industrial networks

173 p.Las redes industriales interconectan sensores y actuadores para llevar a cabo funciones de monitorización, control y protección en diferentes entornos, tales como sistemas de transporte o sistemas de automatización industrial. Estos sistemas ciberfísicos generalmente están soportados por múltiples redes de datos, ya sean cableadas o inalámbricas, a las cuales demandan nuevas prestaciones, de forma que el control y gestión de tales redes deben estar acoplados a las condiciones del propio sistema industrial. De este modo, aparecen requisitos relacionados con la flexibilidad, mantenibilidad y adaptabilidad, al mismo tiempo que las restricciones de calidad de servicio no se vean afectadas. Sin embargo, las estrategias de control de red tradicionales generalmente no se adaptan eficientemente a entornos cada vez más dinámicos y heterogéneos.Tras definir un conjunto de requerimientos de red y analizar las limitaciones de las soluciones actuales, se deduce que un control provisto independientemente de los propios dispositivos de red añadiría flexibilidad a dichas redes. Por consiguiente, la presente tesis explora la aplicabilidad de las redes definidas por software (Software-Defined Networking, SDN) en sistemas de automatización industrial. Para llevar a cabo este enfoque, se ha tomado como caso de estudio las redes de automatización basadas en el estándar IEC 61850, el cual es ampliamente usado en el diseño de las redes de comunicaciones en sistemas de distribución de energía, tales como las subestaciones eléctricas. El estándar IEC 61850 define diferentes servicios y protocolos con altos requisitos en terminos de latencia y disponibilidad de la red, los cuales han de ser satisfechos mediante técnicas de ingeniería de tráfico. Como resultado, aprovechando la flexibilidad y programabilidad ofrecidas por las redes definidas por software, en esta tesis se propone una arquitectura de control basada en el protocolo OpenFlow que, incluyendo tecnologías de gestión y monitorización de red, permite establecer políticas de tráfico acorde a su prioridad y al estado de la red.Además, las subestaciones eléctricas son un ejemplo representativo de infraestructura crítica, que son aquellas en las que un fallo puede resultar en graves pérdidas económicas, daños físicos y materiales. De esta forma, tales sistemas deben ser extremadamente seguros y robustos, por lo que es conveniente la implementación de topologías redundantes que ofrezcan un tiempo de reacción ante fallos mínimo. Con tal objetivo, el estándar IEC 62439-3 define los protocolos Parallel Redundancy Protocol (PRP) y High-availability Seamless Redundancy (HSR), los cuales garantizan un tiempo de recuperación nulo en caso de fallo mediante la redundancia activa de datos en redes Ethernet. Sin embargo, la gestión de redes basadas en PRP y HSR es estática e inflexible, lo que, añadido a la reducción de ancho de banda debida la duplicación de datos, hace difícil un control eficiente de los recursos disponibles. En dicho sentido, esta tesis propone control de la redundancia basado en el paradigma SDN para un aprovechamiento eficiente de topologías malladas, al mismo tiempo que se garantiza la disponibilidad de las aplicaciones de control y monitorización. En particular, se discute cómo el protocolo OpenFlow permite a un controlador externo configurar múltiples caminos redundantes entre dispositivos con varias interfaces de red, así como en entornos inalámbricos. De esta forma, los servicios críticos pueden protegerse en situaciones de interferencia y movilidad.La evaluación de la idoneidad de las soluciones propuestas ha sido llevada a cabo, principalmente, mediante la emulación de diferentes topologías y tipos de tráfico. Igualmente, se ha estudiado analítica y experimentalmente cómo afecta a la latencia el poder reducir el número de saltos en las comunicaciones con respecto al uso de un árbol de expansión, así como balancear la carga en una red de nivel 2. Además, se ha realizado un análisis de la mejora de la eficiencia en el uso de los recursos de red y la robustez alcanzada con la combinación de los protocolos PRP y HSR con un control llevado a cabo mediante OpenFlow. Estos resultados muestran que el modelo SDN podría mejorar significativamente las prestaciones de una red industrial de misión crítica

S3N - Smart Solution for Substation Networks, an architecture for the management of communication networks in power substations

ABSTRACT: Today, the communications network has become an essential element to the operation of any type of organization or infrastructure, such is the case of the electrical power substations. Such networks in particular, demand high levels of availability and reliability, as the substation is a key element in the chain of energy generation and distribution. However, although recent network modernization introduced new features that allow optimizing the operation of the substation, the variety of devices present in such environment (Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs), Merging Units (MUs), Network Switches, IEEE 1588 Master Clock) and the huge set of application-level protocols (Sampled Measured Values (SV), Generic Object Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE), Manufacturing Message Specification protocol (MMS), Precision Time Protocol (PTP), among others), increase the management complexity. Nevertheless, in recent years, data networks have been permeated by two major trends aiming to facilitate the administration of complex networks: Software Defined Networking (SDN) and virtualizationtechnologies, which make the network management more flexible and enable the rapid development and deployment of network services. This thesis proposes a set of contributions to solve the research challenges around of the current operation of a power substation communication network that have not been tackled by the research community. To do that, it performs a comprehensive review of the appropriation of SDN as an enabler in the management and operation of the power substations communication networks. The first research challenge we identified in this work is that, to the best of our knowledge, there are not research works proposing a complete architecture for the management of the communications networks of the power substation; also existing works do not introduce the virtualization technologies as an enabler in this environment. They only present how the application of SDN concepts may improve the performance of different communication tasks in power substations. This thesis introduces a novel architecture called Smart Solution for Substation Networks (S3N), which presents a different way to represent the interaction among all elements involved in the operation of the power substation, taking the communications network as the central point and the SDN paradigm as a key element of its formulation. The second challenge found in this work is that there is no unique criterion to define the structure of the network topology since, in every power substation, the end user implements their own topologies or the topology suggested by a vendor. In this context, this thesis presents a methodology to specify and characterize a reliable topology that vii guarantees fault-tolerance, according to the guidelines described in the architecture S3N. In addition, this thesis presents alternative SDN solutions for loops-based topologies in the proposed network topology which would be technically unfeasible using common network protocols. These solutions include algorithms to solve problems related to the broadcast and multicast traffic management. Also, we discovered that, although the communication networks of modern electrical substations provide major benefits, various research articles have evidenced several vulnerabilities related to the operation protocols in this critical infrastructure. This thesis, in order to improve the security, presents two strategies to detect intrusions and one SDN approach to mitigate attacks in the reconnaissance phase. Finally, all these contributions would not be enough to guarantee a reliable operation without mechanisms to bring traffic differentiation and provisioning. This thesis makes the best out of the architecture proposed to deploy Quality of Service (QoS) inside power substation communication networks, under the SDN paradigm