WE ARE ALL GONNA DIE: HOW THE WEAK POINTS OF THE POWER GRID LEAVE THE UNITED STATES WITH AN UNACCEPTABLE RISK

Federal regulations aim to ensure grid reliability and harden it against outages; however, widespread outages continue. This thesis examines the spectrum of regulations to evaluate them. It outlines their structure, the regulations’ intent, and weighs them against evolving cyber and physical threats and natural disaster risks. Currently, the regulatory structure is incapable of providing uniform security. Federal standards protect only the transmission portion of the grid, leaving the distribution section vulnerable to attack due to varying regulations from state to state, or county to county. The regulations cannot adapt quickly enough to meet dynamic threats, rendering them less effective. Cyber threats can be so agile that protectors are unaware of vulnerabilities, and patching requirements are too lengthy, which increases the risk exposure. No current weather mitigation or standard is capable of protecting the grid despite regular natural disasters that cause power shutdowns. The thesis concludes that bridging these gaps requires not increasing protection standards, but redundancy. Redundancy, mirrored after the UK's infrastructure policy, is more likely to reduce failure risk through layered components and systems. Microgrids are proven effective in disasters to successfully deliver such redundancy and should be implemented across all critical infrastructure sectors.Civilian, Department of Homeland SecurityApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

Moving towards whole settlement energy self-sufficiency in rural communities

PhD ThesisEnergy has become an important issue for governments, communities and individuals, as concerns about energy prices, security of supply and climate change increase. Community scale low carbon energy systems could play an important role in future energy systems, but until recently UK government policy focussed on centralised energy systems. A number of rural communities elsewhere in Europe have made transformational whole settlement transitions from fossil fuel dependent towards renewable powered energy systems; however, the number of these in the UK is limited. Using a case study approach of European and UK cases, this research examines: reasons why rural communities embark on journeys towards whole place energy self-sufficiency; what capacities are present and contributions of these on outcomes achieved; whether there are similarities or differences between Europe and the UK and whether these are generalisable. European cases are examined using secondary and UK cases mainly primary data sources. Cases had varying rationales for embarking on whole settlement approaches to energy self-sufficiency. Whilst these don’t appear to determine the degree of energy self-sufficiency achieved, a whole settlement approach was considered important. No cases achieved energy self-sufficiency, but most made significant progress towards this and the idea did function as a boundary object. A number of capacities were present across all the cases such as public funding for energy system delivery, some capacities were present in the majority of cases and there were differences in capacities between the European and UK cases including leadership by local government. If the UK is serious about whole place energy self-sufficiency there needs to be; a commitment to public funding and resolving whether local authorities at their current scale and resourcing can provide leadership, or if alternative forms of local governance need to be found

Low Carbon Land Use: Paris, Pittsburgh, and the IPCC

This article describes strategies that local governments are employing to both mitigate and adapt to climate change, using their state-given powers to plan community development and to regulate private building. Local governments have significant legal authority to shape human settlements and, in so doing, lower CO2 emissions from buildings and vehicles, increase the sequestration of carbon by the natural environment, and promote distributed energy systems and renewable energy facilities that lower fossil fuel consumption. Local elected leaders are highly motivated to avoid the on-the-ground consequences of our changing climate. The effects of climate change manifest themselves at the local level, where people are killed or injured, property is destroyed, businesses are shuttered, ecosystems are fouled, and where our democratic system is most vibrant and able to respond. In 2014, the international community caught up with local governments in the global race against climate change. That year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change embraced the critical role of municipal governments in mitigating the causes of climate change. In 2015, the Paris Climate Agreement adopted by the Conference of the Parties followed suit. This has encouraged localities to redouble their efforts and creates new and exciting opportunities for intergovernmental partnerships to manage climate change

Energy storage sizing for low-inertia microgrids, and lessons learned from a potential microgrid

The coordinated control of multiple distributed generators in a microgrid and the preservation of adequate system inertia in real-time operations are some of the principal technical challenges for stable microgrid operation. One issue in particular pertains to grid-tied inverters, which, as mandated by present standards, are only permitted to operate at unity power factor, thereby requiring the microgrid’s synchronous generators to operate at a low power factor. This behavior accordingly introduces ramifications by limiting the generator’s active power output, which would compromise frequency and voltage stability margins. Consideration is also given to the effect of line impedances, since interconnecting microgrid lines can be described by a variety of X/R ratios that affect the control and flow of active and reactive power. Moreover, the absence of a stiff grid presents control challenges for grid-tied inverters due to the inverters’ tendency to regulate the voltage at the point of common coupling. These same inverters also jeopardize microgrid stability due to their low equivalent inertia as traditional forms of generation (i.e., spinning sources) become displaced by inertia-less inverters. Because of this low microgrid inertia, fluctuations in the output power of renewable energy sources or changes in local load levels may lead to power quality or frequency/voltage stability concerns. Therefore, energy storage sizing is investigated in this dissertation, as it is closely related to the stability analysis of microgrids. Furthermore, an existing residential community (in Austin, TX) described by a moderate penetration of photovoltaic sources and electric vehicle charging is considered, and the implications of said community being retrofitted to a microgrid are examined.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Experiences of Community Wind Electrification Projects in Bolivia: Evaluation and Improvements for Future Projects

Postprint (published version

Renewable Energy Access and Resilience in Urban Developing Areas: Distributed Solar Networks and Peer-to-Peer Energy Trading in Puerto Rico

This senior essay under the Environmental Studies major at Yale University explores the environmental and social benefits of applying innovative technology to the energy sector. Three types of energy networks are analyzed, focusing on the use of distributed energy and peer to peer energy trading on a blockchain platform. The benefits of distributed renewable energy networks can most strongly be applied to locations in need of more reliable, resilient, and cost-effective electricity. Puerto Rico is a case study. Methods include analysis of U.S. Energy Information Administration and Census Bureau data as well as personal interviews with Puerto Rican energy developers. A financial model was created to tailor a power-purchase-agreement format to residential solar in order to develop an alternative funding method to the current grid price of electricity of 22.77 cents per kWh in Puerto Rico. The hurricanes of 2017 damaged the entire island, and every problem was exacerbated by the prolonged and total lack of power. Building a network of distributed solar energy through residential and school rooftops in Puerto Rico is argued in this thesis to be the best post-hurricane action to take in order to improve energy reliability, affordability, access, and resilience to future disasters and risks

DETECTION OF SYNTHETIC ANOMALIES ON AN EXPERIMENTALLY GENERATED 5G DATA SET USING CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORKS

The research microgrid currently deployed at Marine Corps Air Station, Miramar, is leveraging Verizon’s Non-Standalone (NSA) 5G communications network to provide connectivity between dispersed energy assets and the energy and water operations center (EWOC). Due to its anchor to the Verizon 4G/LTE core, the NSA network does not provide technological avenues for cyber anomaly detection. In this research, we developed a traffic anomaly detection model using supervised machine learning for the energy communication infrastructure at Miramar. We developed a preliminary cyber anomaly detection platform using a convolutional neural network (CNN). We experimentally generated a benign 5G data set using the AT&T 5G cellular tower at the NPS SLAMR facility. We injected synthetic anomalies within the data set to test the CNN and its effectiveness at classifying packets as anomalous or benign. Data sets with varying amounts of anomalous data, ranging from 10% to 50%, were created. Accuracy, precision, and recall were used as performance metrics. Our experiments, conducted with Python and TensorFlow, showed that while the CNN did not perform its best on the data sets generated, it has the potential to work well with a more balanced data set that is large enough to host more anomalous traffic.ONRLieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

AGENT BASED, DISTRIBUTED CONTROL STRATEGIES AND OPTIMIZATION OF PLUG-IN ELECTRIC VEHICLES ON SMART/MICROGRID ARCHITECTURES

This thesis will present strategies for the use of plug-in electric vehicles on smart and microgrids. MATLAB is used as the design tool for all models and simulations. First, a scenario will be explored using the dispatchable loads of electric vehicles to stabilize a microgrid with a high penetration of renewable power generation. Grid components for a microgrid with 50% photovoltaic solar production will be sized through an optimization routine to maintain storage system, load, and vehicle states over a 24-hour period. The findings of this portion are that the dispatchable loads can be used to guard against unpredictable losses in renewable generation output. Second, the use of distributed control strategies for the charging of electric vehicles utilizing an agent-based approach on a smart grid will be studied. The vehicles are regarded as additional loads to a primary forecasted load and use information transfer with the grid to make their charging decisions. Three lightweight control strategies and their effects on the power grid will be presented. The findings are that the charging behavior and peak loads on the grid can be reduced through the use of distributed control strategies