20 kV Gallium Nitride Electromagnetic Pulse Arrestor for Grid Reliability.
Abstract not provided.
Kaplar, Robert↗
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20 kV Gallium Nitride Electromagnetic Pulse Arrestor for Grid Reliability.
Abstract not provided.
Kaplar, Robert↗
Grid Reliability and Resilience - Opportunities for Energy Storage.
Abstract not provided.
Byrne, Raymond H.↗
SolarFax: Solar Asset Intelligence for Project and Grid Reliability
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Nagel, James↗
Explained: Maintaining a Reliable Future Grid with More Wind and Solar
Since the early 2000s, maintaining grid reliability has become more complex due to a variety of factors, including the changing generation mix, the creation of wholesale energy markets, and a growing number of extreme weather events. Parts of the U.S. grid are already operating with significant amounts of wind and solar generation - with 2022 annual wind and solar generation in the range of 25% to 40%. Even without considering the effects of extreme weather, maintaining reliability will require new capacity to address both growth in electric demand and retiring capacity. Based on the 2022 North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Long-Term Reliability Assessment, the combination of both growth in peak demand and retirements suggests a need for more than 100 gigawatts (GW) of new capacity by 2032. In general, there are a five categories of resources that are expected to be deployed and used to meet the challenge of maintaining an adequate source of supply in the coming decades: new wind and solar resources (accounting for their reliability contributions), energy storage, demand response resources, expanded transmission, and continued use of thermal generators.
power grid↗
Electric Grid Resilience and Reliability for Grid Architecture
Grid modernization activities cite resilience (sometimes called resiliency) as a key electric power grid characteristic to be improved or maximized, and so it is crucial for the development of resilient grid architectures that the concept of grid resilience be clear and quantifiable. However, attempts to define and quantify a concept of resilience for electric power grids have mostly relied upon ad hoc definitions that do not have much underlying rigor and are often closely tied to reliability, sometimes only differing in terms of scale and frequency of events. While grid reliability would seem to have strong definition given the IEEE 1366 standard, grid resilience is a term that is less clear.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
A method for assessing economic, environmental, and reliability tradeoffs of interregional transmission connecting ERCOT (the Texas grid) to the eastern and western grids
Reliable development of the power grid is an evolving concern for humanity due to extreme weather that frequently threatens power sector infrastructure. The state of Texas is a uniquely structured testbed for grid planners to study when looking for solutions to development, innovation, and overcoming such challenges. Because of its size and islanded structure, Texas is small enough to model, but big enough to matter. Texas is a global leader in energy production, energy consumption, and maintains an unusually diverse fuel mix. In addition, the state has experienced winter freezes, heat waves, wind storms, droughts and floods that have threatened power sector infrastructure or caused recent blackouts and calls for demand side conservation. One of the most devastating of these events was the North American winter storm, dubbed “Winter Storm Uri” by the Weather Channel, that froze the region in February 2021 and led to an extended power outage event that put the majority of Texan residents in darkness for days. While preparing to avoid such outage events in the future, various tools have been proposed to improve grid reliability, including energy efficiency, demand response, and distributed energy resources. An additional option would be to develop interregional transmission that connects the Texas grid to other national grids. To assess the merits of this idea, we developed a novel, universally-applicable and internationally-relevant framework to study how the Texas grid would evolve alongside access to various interregional ties. This method allows us to stress the synthetic grid structure and analyze how it would respond to the shock of a simulated winter storm event. Our method leverages open-source modeling tools, such as PowerGenome, pyGRETA, and GenX to synthesize unique zonal grid data, construct a consolidated network of model regions, and simulate different developmental pathways of capacity expansion and operational dispatch. We demonstrate our method with an analysis connecting the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the grid that serves most of Texas, the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC), the grid that serves the western half of the contiguous U.S., and the Eastern Interconnect, the grid that serves the eastern half of the contiguous U.S. Our results indicate that the cost-optimal capacity of interregional transmission connecting the ERCOT grid to other grids lies between 9–13 GW assuming baseline conditions. Building this amount of connecting capacity in one or multiple directions lowers the costs and emissions of development and operation by up to $16 billion and 257 million metric tonnes (MMT) respectively. Additionally, our results show that the interregional connections between ERCOT and other national grids reduce the amount of total load shed required through mild winter storm events. However, our results also show that there is a threshold of very extreme winter storm conditions, spanning multiple service areas, above which the connections exacerbate resource adequacy problems. Therefore, the results indicate that the connections need to be carefully planned alongside the rest of the grid infrastructure to avoid over-reliance on specific resources or technology options.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
Dynamically Learning Incentives for Load Control
As electrical generation becomes more distributed and volatile, and loads become more uncertain, controllability of distributed energy resources (DERs), regardless of their ownership status, will be necessary for grid reliability. Grid operators lack direct control over end-users' grid interactions, such as energy usage, but incentives can influence behavior -- for example, an end-user that receives a grid-driven incentive may adjust their consumption or expose relevant control variables in response. A key challenge in studying such incentives is the lack of data about human behavior, which usually motivates strong assumptions, such as distributional assumptions on compliance or rational utility-maximization. In this paper, we propose a general incentive mechanism in the form of a constrained optimization problem -- our approach is distinguished from prior work by modeling human behavior (e.g., reactions to an incentive) as an arbitrary unknown function. We propose feedback-based optimization algorithms to solve this problem that each leverage different amounts of information and/or measurements. We show that each converges to an asymptotically stable incentive with (near)-optimality guarantees given mild assumptions on the problem. Finally, we evaluate our proposed techniques in voltage regulation simulations on standard test beds. We test a variety of settings, including those that break assumptions required for theoretical convergence (e.g., convexity, smoothness) to capture realistic settings. In this evaluation, our proposed algorithms are able to find near-optimal incentives even when the reaction to an incentive is modeled by a theoretically difficult (yet realistic) function.
demand response↗
A method to identify weak points of interconnection of renewable energy resources
The increasing penetration of renewable energy resources (RERs) is challenging power grid planning and operation in maintaining grid reliability. Potential power grid reliability and stability issues may arise when large-scale RERs are connected to a weak power grid. These issues may become more significant due to the mutual interactions among RERs that are interconnected electrically close through a power network. Weakness analysis based on grid strength assessment is useful for identifying the potential weak grid issues. However, when taking into account the impact of the interactions among RERs, the weakness analysis becomes computationally challenging. Different combinations of points of interconnections (POIs) of RERs may have different impacts on grid strength at each POI. Due to the combination nature, such weakness analysis may be time-consuming when identifying the weakest combination of POIs from a large number of potential candidates in realistic power grids. To address this concern, the impact of the power network structure on grid strength is analyzed in this paper. It is found that the impact mainly depends on the impedance ratios at POIs. The findings can be summarized as two criteria to develop a recursive method for fast identification of the weakest combination in this paper. The efficacy of the proposed method is demonstrated through case studies on the IEEE 39-bus system and a realistic power grid.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
BIL GRID-READY WIND: Reliable and Economical Grid Services Design, Implementation, and Demonstration at the Great Pathfinder Wind Power Plant
The GRID-READY WIND project aimed to demonstrate the ability of utility-scale wind power plants (WPPs) to deliver traditional and emerging grid services (GSs) in both grid-following (GFL) and grid-forming (GFM) modes through a centralized control framework, supplemented by local control adjustments at the wind turbine generator as needed. Throughout the project, the team offered recommendations on how the grid services demonstrated with WPPs could be applied to other inverter-based resources (IBRs), such as photovoltaic (PV) systems and battery energy storage systems (BESS), while considering the unique dynamics of these resources arising from their energy generation characteristics. The project sought to enhance the confidence of system operators (SOs) and planners in utilizing WPPs, alongside other IBRs such as PV plants and BESS, to provide essential grid services over extended periods under diverse operating conditions, thereby supporting their integration into the bulk power system.
17 WIND ENERGY↗
Evaluating grid stress and reliability in future electricity grids across a range of demand, generation mix, and weather trends
The reliability of power grids in the future will depend on how system planners account for the integration of new technologies, extreme weather events, and uncertainties in demand growth from increased electrification and data centers. This study introduces an open-source, multisectoral, multiscale modeling framework that projects grid stress and reliability trends between 2020 and 2055 in the Western Interconnection of the United States. The framework integrates global to national energy-water-land dynamics with power plant siting and hourly grid operations modeling. We analyze future wholesale electricity price shocks and unserved energy events across eight scenarios spanning a range of population growth and economic change, generation mixes, and weather conditions. Our results show future grids with high percentage of non-renewable generation and strong economic growth are characterized by higher reliability and lower wholesale electricity prices than lower growth scenarios because of larger reliance on dispatchable generators and lower fossil fuel extraction costs. Scenarios with high percentage of renewable resources have lower median but more volatile wholesale electricity prices as well as more frequent and severe unserved energy events compared to scenarios relying more on dispatchable generators. These events occur because higher proportion of solar and wind energy causes net demand curves to deepen during midday (duck curves get progressively severe), exacerbating the challenge of meeting demand during summer evening peaks. This study suggests that robust and co-optimized transmission and energy storage planning could help maintain low wholesale electricity prices and high reliability levels in future electricity grids across uncertainties in generation mixes.
Electric grid reliability↗
Ball Grid Array Reliability Assessment for Aerospace Applications
Reliability of Ball Grid Array(BGAs) was evaluated with special emphasis on space applications. This work was performed as part of a consortium led by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to help build the infrastructure necessary for implementation of this technology. Nearly 200 test vehicles, each with four packages, were assembled and tested using an experimental design.
Aerospace↗
The Use of Embedded Electric Grid Storage for Resilience, Operational Flexibility, and Cyber-Security
In recent years, bulk energy storage has been applied to electric power systems as an auxiliary device for the support of grid reliability via grid services. This approach is useful but only extracts value from storage on a marginal basis because grid services involve only a tiny fraction of the power flowing in a grid. While storage is flexible enough to perform many services, assessing its value on a stacked-services basis obscures its real value: storage is a buffer for electric energy flows. All of its capabilities stem from this one fundamental property. Limiting storage to use as an ancillary services device leaves this primary value untapped. The real value of storage is as a means to provide a key characteristic missing from power grids: the ability to absorb stresses with little or no loss of performance – the essence of resilience. Storage applied systematically throughout the grid can provide the missing “shock absorber” springiness that the grid is missing. To provide this value, storage must be incorporated into the grid as core infrastructure and must be deeply integrated into grid operations. Doing so will provide far-reaching benefits to users of electricity at all levels, including vastly increased system resilience, expanded system operational flexibility, support for critical lifeline functions during critical events, and even improved cyber security.
25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
R&D 100 Winner 2017: Control System for Active Damping of Inter-Area Oscillations
Researchers at Sandia National Labs have developed a control system to improve damping of inter-area oscillations to improve power grid reliability. Current grids operate will below transmission capacity to avoid widespread outages due to inter-area oscillations. This control system is the first successful grid demonstration of feedback control making it a game changer for the smart grid.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
Solar Uncertainty Management and Mitigation for Exceptional Reliability in Grid Operations (SUMMER-GO): Project Final Report
The Solar Uncertainty Management and Mitigation for Exceptional Reliability in Grid Operation (SUMMER-GO) project was recently completed through a collaboration among the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Maxar, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the University of Texas at Dallas, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of Colorado Boulder. The project made significant advances in probabilistic solar power forecasting, both through the development of Bayesian model averaging methods for ensemble forecasting and in bringing these and other advancements into practice with Maxar's delivery of operational forecasts to ERCOT. In addition to creating more reliable solar power forecasts, the project developed methods for their utilization in power system operations. These include the development of risk-aware unit commitment and economic dispatch algorithms and methods to reformulate probabilistic forecasts to be used in these power system operational models. Dynamic power system reserve methods were also developed, which have been shown in silico to create economic savings and reliability improvements on an ERCOT-like system as well as financial savings in the ERCOT system through more granular consideration of the uncertainty associated with solar power forecasts. Finally, a situational awareness tool to help grid operators better understand solar power forecast uncertainty in daily operations was developed and extensively vetted.
14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
Rolling Root Mean Square Based Multimodal Anomaly Detection for Real Time Monitoring of Smart Grid
Reliable real-time monitoring is valuable for maintaining the operational integrity of modern electrical smart grids. Deployment of heterogeneous sensing technologies in substations has enabled high-resolution, multichannel waveform monitoring, but also introduces challenges for anomaly detection due to noise, baseline drift, and modality-dependent signal characteristics. In this work, we present a computationally efficient unsupervised method for multimodal event detection based on Rolling Root Mean Square based Event Detection (RRMSED). The method is developed using in-house, field deployed sensors collecting data at a utility substation. The sensing system comprises voltage and current sensors, triaxial accelerometers, and magnetometers, collectively capturing electrical, vibrational, and magnetic waveform measurements at high temporal resolution. RRMSED operates by extracting rolling RMS energy features and their first-order temporal differences from consecutive waveform segments for each channel and then applying channel-specific statistical thresholds learned from historical data. A persistence-based exceedance logic is employed to robustly identify transient events while suppressing impulsive noise, and to provide precise temporal localization with high resolution. The framework is designed for continuous server-side operation and can be deployed in real time without requiring complex models. Experiments on simulated waveform data with known ground truth demonstrate low false positive (FP) and false negative (FN) rates. Application to real substation data shows RRMSED to identify events that are not captured by conventional monitoring indicators including fast transient detection algorithm currently deployed in the system. These results indicate that rolling RMS based features provide an effective and practical basis for real-time multimodal event detection in smart-grid substations.
Mukherjee, Subrata [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000309930338)↗
State Spotlight on Resilience: The Michigan Public Service Commission and Data Informed Accountability
Resilience activities are an emerging area within regulatory utility policy. As resilience frameworks develop, many Public Utility Commissions (PUCs) are looking to initiate resilience activities and have identified enhancing grid reliability as a practical starting point. Reliability describes the grid’s ability to deliver electricity steadily and without interruptions under normal or “blue sky” conditions. Reliability is measured using industry standard metrics such as outage frequency (SAIFI) and outage duration (SAIDI). Resilience is broader, reflecting the grid’s ability to both withstand and recover from disruptions, particularly those caused by extreme events such as severe storms. A reliable grid minimizes routine disruptions; a resilient grid ensures the system can recover quickly when disruptions occur, preventing them from escalating into widespread or prolonged crises.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗