Energy Systems Integration Newsletter: August 2021
In this edition, the latest report in NREL's Storage Futures Study estimates future behind-the-meter storage capacity, NREL to lead new effort in advancing research on grid-forming inverters, integrating hydrogen into low-carbon, high-value products, and more.
United States Could Reach 300 Times Today's Installed Behind-the-Meter Battery Storage Capacity by 2050
Households and businesses around the world are adopting increasing numbers of distributed energy resources (DERs) to lower energy bills and curb carbon emissions. Behind-the-meter battery storage is part of this energy evolution, with declining battery storage costs enticing customers to pair batteries with distributed DERs. With this expansion, the latest report in NREL's Storage Futures Study shows there is economic potential for behind-the-meter battery storage to reach 300 times today's installed capacity by 2050.
The study provides one of the first published estimates of distributed battery storage deployment. The results of the report, which used NREL's novel Distributed Generation Market Demand model and System Advisor Model, can help inform planning for technical grid infrastructure to capture the benefits and mitigate the challenges of growing distributed electricity generation.
Read more about the latest report in NREL's Storage Futures Study.
NREL Will Co-Lead New $35-Million Consortium on Grid-Forming Inverters
As the number of renewables continues to increase in power systems, the U.S. Department of Energy is launching a consortium to build industrywide consensus around leveraging power inverters for large-scale renewable integration. The Universal Interoperability for Grid-Forming Inverters Consortium will use the combined research capabilities of numerous partners across the world to validate advanced inverter controls and coordination strategies to support high-renewable systems. The multiyear collaboration will result in new standards, guidelines, training resources, and operational tools for a renewable energy future.
Read about the upcoming grid-forming inverter consortium.
Hydrogen Integration Process Reduces Costs for Renewable Pathway to Clean Fuels and Chemicals
Hydrogen could be key to decarbonizing future energy systems, but renewable hydrogen production costs are still high. However, an NREL team sees opportunity to integrate hydrogen into low-carbon, high-value products using reactions that also upcycle waste carbon dioxide. Its research has turned out several inventions that integrate hydrogen production via water electrolysis with downstream reactions, enabling significant cuts to electrolyzer capital costs.
Read the full story.
NREL Open-Source Modeling Approach Cracks the Code of Simulating Low-Inertia Power Systems
The United States has 37 gigawatts (GW) of utility-scale solar capacity, with an additional 112 GW of capacity under development. With so much large-scale solar power already in place, renewable energy sources and battery energy storage systems appear to be major players in future power grids. But these new technologies bring additional complexities and challenges. A new article from NREL analysts and the University of California, Berkeley published in IEEE Electrification highlights an open-source modeling tool that is helping power system operators and policymakers understand the behavior of modernized grids and the way they can ensure continued reliability.
Read more about this novel scientific computing method for studying utility-scale renewable power systems.
Webinar Series Teaches the Building Blocks of Cybersecurity
The day after a breach is not the time to develop an incident response protocol. Utility companies in the early stages of cybersecurity development, and policymakers looking for guidance, are tuning in to a new NREL webinar series on defending digital and physical assets. Developed in coordination with the U.S. Agency for International Development, each session covers a specific topic in distributed energy systems, security architecture, or international standards and policy, with actionable steps to mitigate cybersecurity risks and protect critical operations.
Read our story or register for the Sept. 22 webinar on implementing technical controls such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and encryption.
Job Openings in Cybersecurity
NREL's cybersecurity research program is growing, with staff openings for leadership roles that will shape tomorrow's energy security. With a shared mission, dedicated leadership, and cutting-edge facilities and resources, our team is having a direct impact on how energy systems are developed, deployed, operated, and maintained. Hear from NREL leadership and cybersecurity staff in a recent video to learn more about how a career in cybersecurity at NREL can help lead the nation toward a clean and secure energy future.
NREL is hiring for these senior-level cybersecurity positions:
R7413 - Network Architect/Engineer – Cyber
R7585 - Senior Researcher – Energy System Cybersecurity.
New Report Examines Economic Assessments and Resilience of Hybrid Microgrids
Microgrids have emerged as a promising avenue for improving grid resilience and reliability. However, current designs and assessments of microgrids have largely ignored component reliability, leading to notable errors in predicting a microgrid's performance while islanded. A recent technical report from NREL researchers published in Advances in Applied Energy, titled "Resilience and Economics of Microgrids With PV, Battery Storage, and Networked Diesel Generators," provides a new statistical methodology to calculate the impact of distributed energy reliability and variability on a microgrid's performance.
The paper uses NREL's REopt software to explore multiple cost savings and revenue streams, evaluating the impacts for microgrids in California, Maryland, and New Mexico. Results of the paper show that hybrid microgrids—microgrids featuring photovoltaics, battery storage, and networked emergency diesel generators—can provide higher system reliability when islanded and have a lower life cycle cost than traditional diesel generator-based systems.
Latest Episode of Grid Talk Podcast Highlights LA100 Study
Los Angeles is looking to achieve its goal of 100% renewable power by 2035. The latest episode in the Voices of Experience: Grid Talk podcast features a discussion with Lauren Faber O'Connor, chief sustainability officer for the City of Los Angeles, who highlights NREL's recent LA100 study and the city's efforts to achieve its goal.
Check out the full conversation with O'Connor.
NREL Study Shows a Bright Future for Energy Storage in South Asia
By 2022, India's wind and solar power generation capacity is targeted to reach 175 GW. Beyond next year's target, the Indian government is planning to continue rapidly scaling clean energy markets over the next several years to achieve 450 GW of wind and solar by 2030. This will mean a 20% year-over-year growth in the country's wind and solar capacity between 2022 and 2030.
However, to date, there has been no comprehensive assessment of cost-effective opportunities for bulk grid storage in South Asia. To address this gap, NREL performed a first-of-its-kind assessment of cost-effective opportunities for grid-scale energy storage in South Asia that demonstrates energy storage can play a significant role in the region's grid operations over the next three decades, especially in India.
Read the full story about energy storage in South Asia.
Publications Roundup
With photovoltaics forecasted to provide more than 600 GW of generation by 2050, power electronic inverters will play a dominant role in future systems, and low-inertia stability must be insured to maintain system reliability. This technical report from NREL looks at the need to move from traditional grid-following controllers, where voltage and frequency are regulated by inertial sources, to grid-forming controllers, which actively regulate voltage and frequency. The report demonstrates that grid-forming controllers can improve power system stability, share load autonomously among multiple inverters, and are compatible with the existing electric grid.
Protection systems are critical for the proper operation of electric grids. However, with more inverter-based PV being integrated into the grid, current protections schemes can often be too slow to accurately identify and locate faults, creating a need for protection approaches tailored to systems with high levels of inverter-based PV. This NREL technical report aims to develop protections schemes that detect faults faster and more accurately, specifically in distribution systems and/or microgrids with high penetrations of inverter-based PV.
The energy system is undergoing a major transformation, with distributed generation expected to play a significant role in the new energy system. This article published in Energy Systems provides a computational framework for NREL's open-sourced DER modeling software, REopt Lite, which allows users to evaluate the economic viability of DERs, identify system sizes and dispatch strategies to minimize energy costs, and estimate how long a system can sustain critical load during a grid outage. The framework can help accelerate the analysis of DERs to enable rapid planning and decision-making, thereby enabling greater renewable energy deployment.
USAID Energy Storage Decision Guide for Policymakers
Worldwide, ambitious power sector transformation strategies, along with continually falling costs of renewable energy technologies, are driving higher levels of grid-connected variable renewable energy. Because higher penetrations of variable renewable energy can drive an additional need for power system flexibility, decision makers are increasingly looking to emerging grid solutions, such as energy storage, to ensure reliable and cost-effective integration of variable renewable energy. This report from the USAID-NREL Greening the Grid platform arms relevant decision makers with the base layer of information they need to understand energy storage and make informed policy, regulatory, and investment decisions around grid-connected energy storage.
In 2019, NREL assisted the United States Army in successfully deploying a behind-the-meter battery energy storage system at Fort Carson in Colorado. This fact sheet looks at this project and beyond, highlighting how NREL used a phased approach to efficiently identify the most cost-effective battery storage projects across 80 U.S. Army installations.
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