Hetdex

What is SmartGrid

The need for energy savings, improved reliability, and increased capacity world-wide is stimulating the transformation of classical (passive) electric grids to smartgrids.  A smartgrid is a portion of a larger electric power system that embraces a high concentration of measurement, communication, and control.  These technologies will allow electric grids to become “smart” and also become autonomous.

The US government has provided funding to several cities in the United States to demonstrate aspects of smartgrid: Austin, TX is one of them.

Building on Experience:

CEM is leveraging a decade of experience in modeling power systems for the Navy Electric Ship program and more recent Microgrid experiments to advance SmartGrid Technology:

research tier
Figure 1. Resarch tiers at CEM related to power system and modeling and simulation

Electric Ship: The US Navy is constructing all-electric ships to reduce manning, fuel consumption, and increase automation onboard its vessels.  This research task was delegated to seven US Universities under the name of the Electric Ship Research Development Consortium (ESRDC).

The Center for Electromechanics is a founding member of the ESRDC.  CEM has contributed to this research with several technology demonstrations, and several simulation models to help the US Navy compare ac and dc architectures for future electrical systems.

The technology demonstrations produced by CEM are flywheel-based energy storage, compact (energy dense) generation units, green-energy vessels, fuel-cell powered vehicles (ashore use), and the staging of up to 130kW dc arc faults in controlled environment.  These demonstrations play an important role for the US Navy to make decisions about future fleet in reduced time.

MicroGrid Experiments: Microgrids are electrically and geographical small terrestrial power systems capable of operating “connected to” or “islanded from” the national grid.  The islanding capability of microgrids allows them to be self-sufficient during emergencies when it is critical to have a source of reliable power.

An emerging trait of microgrids is the penetration of renewable energy at distribution-level voltages (<35kV).  The availability of this technology is of interest to several private and public entities—but in particular to the US Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Energy (DOE).

In 2008, DoD and DOE  announced their intent to make military installations net-zero energy to the grid: installations that produce as much energy (on or near them) as they consume.  This energy can come from renewable sources or from fossil fuels.  In 2009, the US Navy responded to this goal by mandating that by 2020, 50% of the Navy’s energy consumption will come from renewable energy sources.

CEM is working with the US Navy to meet these goals.  This requires an understanding of the Navy’s requirements, the utility industry, renewable energy sources, power system analysis and simulation—but most importantly—the ability to deliver technology demonstration to show the US Navy how their energy will be managed in the future. CEM is well-positioned and committed to this delivery.

Multi-Core Solver:

importance of software
Figure 2. Importance of software in the research-community supply chain.

 

Roadmaps to technology demonstrations rely on software as a core-source of credible data. The large dependence on computers to produce simulation data has caused desktop computational capabilities to appear lean—but they are not.
In the realm of large and complex power system simulation (e.g., electric ships), today’s commercial software run time is unacceptable in transient simulation scenarios.  A major reason for this costly time requirement is that multicore processors are not fully utilized by commercial software—despite the introduction of multicore processors in 2005.

In general, software manufacturers do not leverage multicore processing.  Historically, the expectation was that computational speed would improve through the invention of ever faster processors.  Software was designed on the assumption that this would continue to be true.   However, today we are seeing more potential computational benefit from multi-core processors.  Software vendors have not yet made the transition.

The former categories supersede software run-time.  Although it is the software manufacturer’s responsibility to utilize many-core processors to remain competitive, this expensive, time-consuming, and delicate task can take years to realize.  (A time investment that is most times better suited to expanding the component libraries.)

CEM is responding to this need by developing a customized parallel power system solver that will solve power system problems in fractional time.  Upon its release, this solver will be free and distributable at no cost to its users.

The multicore solver under development at CEM will parallelize select Simulink models and return transient simulation results in significantly reduced time.  Recent international exposure of this solver has aroused interested from the US Navy and has secured funding for the following years to come.

For more information on CEMSolver, please click here.

Media

Smart Grid Simulation w/PVs & EVs
Pecan Street (pecanstreet.org) is a Smart Grid built within the Meller Community in Austin, Texas. UT CEM is a principle research participant in the Pecan Street Project. This video shows the impact of photovoltaic arrays and electric vehicles (Chevy Volts) on the distribution transformers.

UT/UTSA Power System Forum - March 2012
This meeting was held at the UT Center for Electromechanics to provide an opportunity for research staff and faculty from both UT at Austin and UT at San Antonio to present current work in power grid testing and to discuss power grid collaboration opportunities.

Dr. Berberoglu - Solar Energy and Biofuels Laboratory
Kwasinski - Power Electronic Systems Research at The University of Texas at Austin
Lewis - Hybrid Electric Vehicles Research and Development
Uriarte - Simulation of Pecan Streets Smart Grid: A Forcast of the Impact on Austin Energy

Research Tiers: CEM’s effort focuses on system level applications, particular to understanding the potential benefits of new conceptual systems.  Modeling and simulation are the effective tools for such research.  Modeling of systems, however, requires in depth knowledge of components.  The center has this knowledge due to its history of designing, building, and testing high power equipment.

Cybersecurity: As more data is stored relative to the US Utility infrastructure, the need to protect that data is increasingly important.  Researchers at CEM are working to understand and protect emerging smartgrid technologies from these threats.  CEM strives to be the world expert in utility grid planning, modeling, testing, and protection.

Isolation of Power:

Military: Military bases throughout the US conduct power system reviews to insure they are operational independent of standard utility grids.  Integration of power sources from nuclear to renewable are being considered to provide bases more independence from standard local power plants in the case of an attack or disaster.  Microgrid research being conducted at CEM can help military personel understand the impact of various power source options and assist in planning and selection of power sources given individual base circumstances.

FEMA: Recent disasters have sparked renewed interest in insuring that US Utility grids are more robust and accessible in the case that disaster strikes.  Microgrids could be the key to insuring that when main utility grids are compromised by inclement weather that power remains accessible to those that desperately need it.  Of particular research interest, is the possibility of coupling power plants that are light enough to be air-lifted with microgrids.

Pecan Street: CEM is helping lead modeling and simulation efforts of Pecan Street, Inc.: the largest smartgrid demonstration project in Austin, TX.  This smartgrid project presents unique challenges to Austin Energy, which is seeing new levels of power-demand and energy surplus at the residential levels.  Some of these challenges are:

  1. • the high concentration of electric vehicles on the same feeder (100 Chevy Volts)
  2. • the amount of residential-level photovoltaic generation•the need for residential energy consumption patterns every 1 min.

    • penetration of renewable energy and storage at the distribution and residential levels

Austin Energy and Pecan Street, Inc. are collaborating with CEM to anticipate the challenges of smartgrids.  CEM has further joined efforts with several departments of The University of Texas at Austin: electrical, chemical, mechanical, and civil.  This combined, yet heterogeneous, expertise will result computer models to predict undesirable effects such as transformer insulation degradation, life-span reduction, overloading, and grid instability.

CEM understands the challenges of simulating such complex systems.  For this reason, CEM is helping to lead the simulation efforts for this initiative.

For more information please contact
Dr. Robert Hebner
512-232-1628

Affiliates:

ONR logo Pecan street project

Additional Information and papers:

Power Systems Research - Papers presented at the 2011 IEEE 33rd International Telecommunications Energy Conference (INTELEC) October 2011 and the 2012 IEEE PES Innovative Smart Grid Technologies Conference in Washington, DC January 2012:

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