Energy Systems Integration Newsletter: October 2021

In this edition, a new initiative catalyzes clean energy cybersecurity research, an NREL distributed energy resource modeling tool wins an R&D 100 Award, how NREL built a 100% renewable microgrid in a few days to black start a campus, and more.

Introducing the Clean Energy Cybersecurity Accelerator

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and NREL recently announced an exciting initiative to catalyze the development of cybersecurity solutions for the nation's clean energy grid of the future. The Clean Energy Cybersecurity Accelerator brings together federal infrastructure and expertise, asset owners in the energy sector, and technology innovators in a way that has not been done before.

The new program comes at a time when cybersecurity threats to critical infrastructure are evolving fast—and as the nation works toward a zero-emissions future.

"The Clean Energy Cybersecurity Accelerator offers a strategic opportunity for private and public stakeholders to meet the national need for energy sector cybersecurity while accelerating innovation and adoption," said Jon White, director of NREL's Cybersecurity Program Office. "If we are to be successful in the deployment of clean energy technologies at scale, we must ensure that our energy systems are secure and resilient to disruption—and [we] must always be several steps ahead of our adversaries."

Experts from the DOE Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response and the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy will serve as a federal advisory board within the program. Strategic direction and cost-sharing will be provided by an industry-led steering committee, including experts from Xcel Energy, Berkshire Hathaway Energy, and other utilities that will be encouraged to join in the near future. As a result, the Clean Energy Cybersecurity Accelerator will allow technology startups to exit with competitive experience, new partnership opportunities, and professional evaluation of the most urgent cybersecurity challenges related to modern energy systems.

Learn more by reading the NREL news story on the cybersecurity accelerator, and visit the Clean Energy Cybersecurity Accelerator web page.

NREL's Distributed Generation Market Demand Model Wins R&D 100 Award

Every year, R&D World magazine awards the 100 most innovative technologies of the past year. NREL's Distributed Generation Market Demand model (dGen™) received a 2021 award for the software/services innovation category.

dGen simulates customer adoption and use of distributed energy resources—including solar, wind, and storage—in residential and commercial entities through 2050. "We're honored and humbled to receive an R&D 100 Award," said Ben Sigrin, principal investigator and lead of the dGen team. "Thank you to everyone who has supported the dGen model through the years. We'll keep evolving dGen to be the premier distributed energy resource model." Stay tuned for the 2021 model release, including new data and cloud functionality.

Learn about NREL's award-winning technologies.

NREL Shows Scalable, Resilient, and Secure Systems With Communication-Less Controls

When NREL's Flatirons Campus lost power, researchers responded in the way they know best: powering with renewables. Using a wind turbine, a photovoltaic array, and a Lithium-ion battery, researchers built a 100% renewable energy microgrid from scratch, showing that relatively simple controls can enable widescale resilience.

Read the story, and watch the video.

Q&A With Jon White: Achieving Security by Design

Jon White leads NREL's Cybersecurity Program Office, meaning he is concerned not only with greening the grid but also doing it securely. For our Cyber Month Q&A, White shares his early exploits in mechanical engineering, cybersecurity trends to watch, and his approach for uniting public and private expertise to outpace the speed of emerging threats.

Read our full conversation with Jon White.

Industry Proves To Be a Promising Prospect for Future Grid Flexibility

Industrial manufacturing consumes one-third of energy in the United States and worldwide, and it could help ensure electricity supply-demand balance by contributing to demand flexibility. The potential decarbonization of industry through electrification could massively increase the electric load—making it even more important as a grid flexibility option. NREL and the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis studied the net present value of demand response with large behind-the-meter batteries in four energy-intensive industries. In some scenarios, the net present value of one industrial facility totaled $45 million by 2050.

Read the full study by the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis.

Energy Storage Ecosystem Offers Lowest-Cost Path to 100% Renewable Power

There is no silver bullet technology for energy storage, says an NREL analysis. Rather, multiple technologies with different storage durations, power capacities, and efficiencies will be necessary as systems approach 100% renewable operation. Findings show that a mixed portfolio of technologies suited to specific geographies offers the least-cost path to high penetrations of renewables.

Read the story about this NREL analysis.

Largest Yet Autonomous Energy Systems Experiment Proves Algorithms on 1 Million-Node Model

NREL's groundbreaking autonomous energy systems controls have been gradually validated on larger and more detailed systems. In the largest experiment yet, NREL demonstrated how a complex, multimillion-person distribution system could deploy autonomous controls and optimize grid stability in real time.

Read the full story on autonomous energy.

NREL Tool Provides Cybersecurity and Savings for Hydropower Plants

With more variable renewables on the grid, hydropower could have new importance as a reliable baseline resource; however, the U.S. hydropower fleet is not fully up to the challenges from modern threats, such as cybersecurity. With support from the DOE Water Power Technologies Office, a new NREL and Argonne National Laboratory tool, the Cybersecurity Value-at-Risk Framework, provides hydropower operators complete and customized assessments of their cybersecurity risks and demonstrates how different investments will improve overall resilience.

Read the full story on the Cybersecurity Value-at-Risk Framework.

Novel Multimodel Analysis Explores Benefits and Costs of Uniting Two of the World's Largest Power Systems

With renewable resources such as wind and solar contributing more and more of the U.S. energy supply, the ability to transfer those resources across regions could have major benefits—especially during times of power system stress, such as extreme weather.

In the multiyear Interconnections Seam Study, NREL used a novel multimodel method that cost-optimizes both generation and transmission resources across the United States to examine potential costs and impacts of four transmission grid designs. Results show that increasing the transmission capacity between the Eastern and Western Interconnections could enable more economically efficient and flexible exchange of power throughout the United States—with scenarios showing up to $2.50 in benefits for every $1 of cost.

Read the full story on the Interconnections Seam Study.

Publications Roundup

Guidance on Guidance: New Resources for Implementing and Understanding IEEE Standard 1547

With the 2018 update of IEEE Standard 1547, the electric industry has far-reaching and reliable guidance on how to interconnect distributed energy resources. However, implementing those technical rules is a challenge, so an NREL team published a guide for local authorities to adopt the new IEEE Std 1547 requirements without confusion or inefficiencies. The report follows extensive input from industry experts about possible obstacles in the implementation process, saving stakeholders from little mistakes that add up to large soft costs.

In another summarizing guide for the revised IEEE Std 1547, NREL explains the role that IEEE Std 1547 could have in electric grid power quality: Background Information on the Power Quality Requirements in IEEE Std 1547-2018. Although IEEE Std 1547 does not directly deal with power quality, it offers requirements that do have a direct impact, and this background information helps clarify which aspects of IEEE Std 1547 relate to power quality.

Comparing Capacity Credit Calculations for Wind: A Case Study in Texas

The degree to which distributed wind can meet customers' energy needs, also known as its capacity credit, varies with wind resource and correlation to net loads. Capacity credit is an important metric that is widely used for resource planning; however, there are multiple methods for estimating capacity credit, depending on specific needs, access to data, and computational resources. This NREL technical report uses multiple methods to calculate the capacity credit of wind for near-term deployment in a Texas interconnection test system. The report then compares the capacity credit results for each method, noting the differences in approaches and assumptions in each method that can impact the resulting capacity credit.

PV Reference Cells for Outdoor Use: An Investigation of Calibration Factors

Reference cells are commonly used in the photovoltaic (PV) industry to measure irradiance because they are seen as a low-cost alternative to thermopile radiometers. However, reference cell characteristics differ substantially from radiometers, so the two forms of measurements cannot be substituted or directly compared with each other. This NREL subcontractor report details an ongoing, multiyear effort to develop guidance and recommendations for the design and use of outdoor reference cells with the goal of reducing inconsistencies and measurement uncertainty for solar PV.

Evaluation of Time-Series Gap-Filling Methods for Solar Irradiance Applications

Accurate data of solar irradiance are important to many solar energy applications, but data sets commonly include gaps, whether from instrument malfunctions or discarded data, which require gap-filling methods to improve data quality. In this technical report, NREL compared different approaches to make up for missing solar data. The researchers tested different methods on 1-minute to half-hourly irradiance data from ground measurement data, finding that relatively simple methods—such as the stine and linear interpolation methods—were the most effective based on statistical metrics.