A review of microgrid development in the United States – A decade of progress on policies, demonstrations, controls, and software tools

Microgrids have become increasingly popular in the United States. Supported by favorable federal and local policies, microgrid projects can provide greater energy stability and resilience within a project site or community. This paper reviews major federal, state, and utility-level policies driving microgrid development in the United States. Representative U.S. demonstration projects are selected and their technical characteristics and non-technical features are introduced. The paper discusses trends in the technology development of microgrid systems as well as microgrid control methods and interactions within the electricity market. Software tools for microgrid design, planning, and performance analysis are illustrated with each tool's core capability. Finally, the paper summarizes the successes and lessons learned during the recent expansion of the U.S. microgrid industry that may serve as a reference for other countries developing their own microgrid industries

Reduction of Energy Storage Requirements in Future Smart Grid using Electric Springs

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Parallel statistical model checking for safety verification in smart grids

By using small computing devices deployed at user premises, Autonomous Demand Response (ADR) adapts users electricity consumption to given time-dependent electricity tariffs. This allows end-users to save on their electricity bill and Distribution System Operators to optimise (through suitable time-dependent tariffs) management of the electric grid by avoiding demand peaks. Unfortunately, even with ADR, users power consumption may deviate from the expected (minimum cost) one, e.g., because ADR devices fail to correctly forecast energy needs at user premises. As a result, the aggregated power demand may present undesirable peaks. In this paper we address such a problem by presenting methods and a software tool (APD-Analyser) implementing them, enabling Distribution System Operators to effectively verify that a given time-dependent electricity tariff achieves the desired goals even when end-users deviate from their expected behaviour. We show feasibility of the proposed approach through a realistic scenario from a medium voltage Danish distribution network

Distributed voltage-driven demand response: flexibility, stability and value assessment

The need for operating reserve from energy storage, demand reduction (DR) etc. is expected to increase signifcantly in future low-carbon Great Britain (GB) power system with high penetration of non-synchronous renewable generation. One way to provide the reserve is to use power electronic compensators (PECs) for point-of-load voltage control (PVC) to exploit the voltage dependence of loads. This thesis focuses on the quantifcation of DR capability from PVC in the domestic sector using high-resolution stochastic demand models and generic distribution networks in GB. The effectiveness of utilising PVC in contributing to frequency regulation is analysed and demonstrated through time domain simulations. The techno-economic feasibility of such technology is evaluated considering the investment cost of the PEC deployment as well as the economic and environmental benefts of using PVC. The payback period varies between 0.3 to 6.7 years for different future scenarios considering a range of converter price. It is demonstrated that PVC could effectively complement battery energy storage system towards enhanced frequency response provision in future GB power system. For practical application of PVC for flexible demand and voltage regulation in future distribution networks/microgrids, it is important to investigate the overall small signal stability of the system. In this thesis, the linearised state space model of a distribution network/isolated microgrid with converter-interfaced distributed generators (CDGs) working in grid following mode along with loads with PVC is developed. The stability performance is revealed through both modal analysis and time domain simulations. It is shown that multiple loads with PVC for voltage regulation in distribution networks are not likely to threaten the small signal stability of the system. In the case of a microgrid, the introduction of PVC is shown to have marginal impact on the low frequency modes associated with the droop control of the CDGs. However, there is a trade-off when choosing the droop gain of the loads with PVC. Lower droop gains could ensure better frequency regulation in face of intermittent renewables but at the expense of a lower stability margin for an oscillation mode at a frequency slightly higher than 20Hz.Open Acces

Impact Assessment of Hypothesized Cyberattacks on Interconnected Bulk Power Systems

The first-ever Ukraine cyberattack on power grid has proven its devastation by hacking into their critical cyber assets. With administrative privileges accessing substation networks/local control centers, one intelligent way of coordinated cyberattacks is to execute a series of disruptive switching executions on multiple substations using compromised supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. These actions can cause significant impacts to an interconnected power grid. Unlike the previous power blackouts, such high-impact initiating events can aggravate operating conditions, initiating instability that may lead to system-wide cascading failure. A systemic evaluation of "nightmare" scenarios is highly desirable for asset owners to manage and prioritize the maintenance and investment in protecting their cyberinfrastructure. This survey paper is a conceptual expansion of real-time monitoring, anomaly detection, impact analyses, and mitigation (RAIM) framework that emphasizes on the resulting impacts, both on steady-state and dynamic aspects of power system stability. Hypothetically, we associate the combinatorial analyses of steady state on substations/components outages and dynamics of the sequential switching orders as part of the permutation. The expanded framework includes (1) critical/noncritical combination verification, (2) cascade confirmation, and (3) combination re-evaluation. This paper ends with a discussion of the open issues for metrics and future design pertaining the impact quantification of cyber-related contingencies

Bi-directional coordination of plug-in electric vehicles with economic model predictive control

© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. The emergence of plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) is unveiling new opportunities to de-carbonise the vehicle parcs and promote sustainability in different parts of the globe. As battery technologies and PEV efficiency continue to improve, the use of electric cars as distributed energy resources is fast becoming a reality. While the distribution network operators (DNOs) strive to ensure grid balancing and reliability, the PEV owners primarily aim at maximising their economic benefits. However, given that the PEV batteries have limited capacities and the distribution network is constrained, smart techniques are required to coordinate the charging/discharging of the PEVs. Using the economic model predictive control (EMPC) technique, this paper proposes a decentralised optimisation algorithm for PEVs during the grid-To-vehicle (G2V) and vehicle-To-grid (V2G) operations. To capture the operational dynamics of the batteries, it considers the state-of-charge (SoC) at a given time as a discrete state space and investigates PEVs performance in V2G and G2V operations. In particular, this study exploits the variability in the energy tariff across different periods of the day to schedule V2G/G2V cycles using real data from the university's PEV infrastructure. The results show that by charging/discharging the vehicles during optimal time partitions, prosumers can take advantage of the price elasticity of supply to achieve net savings of about 63%

Electric Springs—A New Smart Grid Technology

The scientific principle of 'mechanical springs' was described by theBritish physicist Robert Hooke in the 1660’s. Since then, there has not been any further development of the Hooke’s law in the electric regime. In this paper, this technological gap is filled by the development of 'electric springs.' The scientific principle, the operating modes, the limitations, and the practical realization of the electric springs are reported. It is discovered that such novel concept has huge potential in stabilizing future power systems with substantial penetration of intermittent renewable energy sources. This concept has been successfully demonstrated in a practical power system setup fed by an ac power source with a fluctuating wind energy source. The electric spring is found to be effective in regulating the mains voltage despite the fluctuation caused by the intermittent nature of wind power. Electric appliances with the electric springs embedded can be turned into a new generation of smart loads, which have their power demand following the power generation profile. It is envisaged that electric springs, when distributed over the power grid, will offer a new form of power system stability solution that is independent of information and communication technology.published_or_final_versio

Electric spring and smart load: technology, system-level impact and opportunities

Increasing use of renewable energy sources to combat climate change comes with the challenge of power imbalance and instability issues in emerging power grids. To mitigate power fluctuation arising from the intermittent nature of renewables, electric spring has been proposed as a fast demand-side management technology. Since its original conceptualization in 2011, many versions and variants of electric springs have emerged and industrial evaluations have begun. This paper provides an update of existing electric spring topologies, their associated control methodologies, and studies from the device level to the power system level. Future trends of electric springs in large-scale infrastructures are also addressed

Use of adaptive thermal storage system as smart load for voltage control and demand response

This paper describes how a large-scale ice-thermal storage can be turned into a smart load for fast voltage control and demand-side management in power systems with intermittent renewable power, while maintaining its existing function of load shaving. The possibility of modifying a conventional thermal load has been practically demonstrated in a refrigerator using power electronics technology. With the help of an electric spring, the modified thermal load can reduce power imbalance in buildings while providing active and reactive power compensation for the power grid. Based on practical data, a building energy model incorporating a large-scale ice-thermal storage system has been successfully used to demonstrate the advantageous demand-response features using computer simulation of both grid connected and isolated power systems. The results indicate the potential of using ice-thermal storage in tall buildings in reducing voltage and frequency fluctuations in weak power grids

Hybrid stochastic/robust flexible and reliable scheduling of secure networked microgrids with electric springs and electric vehicles

Electric spring (ES) as a novel concept in power electronics has been developed for the purpose of dealing with demand-side management. In this paper, to conquer the challenges imposed by intermittent nature of renewable energy sources (RESs) and other uncertainties for constructing a secure modern microgrid (MG), the hybrid distributed operation of ESs and electric vehicles (EVs) parking lot is suggested. The proposed approach is implemented in the context of a hybrid stochastic/robust optimization (HSRO) problem, where the stochastic programming based on unscented transformation (UT) method models the uncertainties associated with load, energy price, RESs, and availability of MG equipment. Also, the bounded uncertainty-based robust optimization (BURO) is employed to model the uncertain parameters of EVs parking lot to achieve the robust potentials of EVs in improving MG indices. In the subsequent stage, the proposed non-linear problem model is converted to linear approximated counterpart to obtain an optimal solution with low calculation time and error. Finally, the proposed power management strategy is analyzed on 32-bus test MG to investigate the hybrid cooperation of ESs and EVs parking lot capabilities in different cases. The numerical results corroborate the efficiency and feasibility of the proposed solution in modifying MG indices.© 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed