Low-cost, Transportable Hydrogen Fueling Station for Early FCEV Adoption

Thousands of public hydrogen fueling stations are needed to support the early Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle (FCEV) market in the U.S.; there are currently 12. The California state government has been the largest investor of the hydrogen fueling infrastructure funding 9 permanent stations currently open to the public with 48 more in development costing anywhere from $1.8M-$5.5M each. To attract private investors and decrease dependence on government funding, a low-cost, mobile hydrogen dispensing system must be developed. This paper describes a transportable hydrogen fueling station that has been designed for $423,000 using off-the-shelf components, less than 23$9.62/kg. This paper presents the mechanical design and operation of the fueling station. A complete report including an economic analysis and safety features is available at: http://hydrogencontest.org/pdf/2014/WSU_2014_HEF_CONTEST.pdf

Measuring and enabling resiliency in distribution sysems with multiple microgrids

Uninterrupted operation of electric power grid is critical for national security and economy of all the dependent infrastructures. Over the few decades, climate and weather related events affecting the continuity of power supply have increased in numbers, and despite higher need for reliable power supply, the number of power outages have increased several folds. The traditional approach of measuring reliability of power systems is being deemed unsuitable to measure the preparedness of electric grid in extreme adverse events. United States Presidential Policy Directive (PPD-21) calls for the resilient national infrastructure to be able to resist or avert widespread damage and losses caused by low frequency, high impact events, such as hurricanes, storms or acts of terrorism. A metrics for resiliency would enable engineers and designers evaluate the relative preparedness of a power distribution system to such events. Due to the subjective nature of the definition of resiliency, there are several ways of approaching the problem. As a consequence, there is no ‘gold-standard’ to quantify the resiliency of a distribution system using a single composite number that can be applied to any distribution system. This research work is an effort to derive a numerical value for measuring resiliency of distribution network. Multiple criteria, such as topology of the network, availability of secondary resources, level of maintenance or age of equipment, restoration and reconfiguration algorithms have been considered to develop possible resiliency metrics. Complex network analysis is used for topological resiliency analysis of networks, and multiple criteria analysis is used for computing the composite resiliency metrics. The proposed methodology is tested using industry-standard IEEE distribution test feeder, CERTS microgrids as well as real feeders in Pullman, Washington. Using a model of two geographically proximal microgrids and an optimization-based reconfiguration algorithm, it has been shown that resiliency of the power distribution system may be improved

ENABLING RESILIENCY OF THE ELECTRIC DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS DURING EXTREME EVENTS

The resiliency of the electric power grid to extreme events is a fundamental motivation for modernizing the aging and vulnerable critical infrastructure.The alarming rise in the number of incidences of cyber-attacks and severe storms over the last few years have caused prolonged power outages for millions of customers.The financial impact of these events upon the utilities has been several hundred billions of dollars.The objective of this dissertation is to develop a comprehensive framework and algorithms for enabling resiliency of power distribution systems - encompassing time-span from planning to post-event restoration and recovery that would minimize the power outages resulting in less economic losses and public inconveniences.Some of the main challenges of the industry in planning - are the broad range of interpretations of power distribution system resiliency, based on the time available for preparing before an event happens and recovering afterward, and lack of detailed, region-specific distribution models.This dissertation addresses these problems extensively.A mathematical model for studying the propagation of extreme events in the cyber-physical power grid has also been discussed.Enabling resiliency in near-term or during the contingency requires the ability to perform power flow and restoration calculations for the impending or ongoing threat.Thus, an event-driven proactive network reconfiguration strategy has been proposed, to study how the path of propagation can impact the operation and restoration of the power distribution system.In the aftermath of an event, the distribution system infrastructure is characterized by uncertain topology, load demand, power resources, and time until power can be completely restored to all customers.In this work, the resiliency of the electric grid has been studied as a robust optimization problem for the effective allocation of scant resources to meet the demands of critical customers during prolonged periods of power outage.The proposed theory and algorithms in this dissertation have been tested on IEEE test systems as well as validated against actual data available from industry partners