Energy Systems Integration Newsletter: September 2022
In this edition, NREL demonstrates accessible microgrid controls for low-cost recoveries, how to achieve the last 10% on the road to 100% clean electricity, a new virtual tour provides an in-depth look at NREL's power electronics capabilities, and more.
NREL Publishes Accessible Microgrid Controls for Low-Cost Recoveries
Microgrids can make the difference between a quick or prolonged outage recovery, but it all hinges on how easily the microgrid can be deployed in the first place. More than a year ago, a surprise outage spurred NREL engineers to innovate a fast recovery with on-site renewables. Their solution showed that common solar, wind, and battery devices could restore power—and, crucially, that it could be done without a complicated or expensive microgrid controller. The method behind NREL's impromptu microgrid is now described in a new report, so other campuses and communities can follow suit and deploy their own low-cost, bare-bones microgrid for recoveries in a pinch.
Read the Microgrids for Anyone story.
On the Road to 100% Clean Electricity: Six Potential Strategies to Break Through Last Few Percent
The last 10% to achieving 100% carbon-free electricity in the United States will be the most challenging and expensive. To help move toward potential solutions for this challenge, a team of NREL grid analysts studied the trade-offs of six possible technology strategies to get from 90% to 100% carbon-free electricity in the United States.
Read about potential technology solutions to overcome the last 10% challenge.
New 3D Tour Shows NREL Power Electronics Capabilities Primed for Innovation
Why are power electronics essential to the U.S. clean energy transition? Simply put, power electronics can convert, amplify, limit, filter, control, and transform electricity in countless ways to supply power to the grid. Thanks to NREL's power electronics research and manufacturing capabilities, we are introducing more versatile materials, higher-performance components, and new concepts and controls that could forever change how the grid operates.
Take a virtual 360-degree tour of NREL's power electronics facilities, and learn how you can work with us to support the seamless integration of renewable energy resources with the electric grid.
Considerations to Achieve a Sustainable U.S. Commercial Building Stock
Building sensors and control systems offer many operational benefits and support U.S. decarbonization, but more than 75% of U.S. commercial buildings don't have the technology. A new study led by the Joint Institute for Strategic Energy Analysis identifies barriers and drivers of adopting building sensors and controls systems—and presents a full breakdown of costs. The findings can inform ways to move closer to high market adoption and tap into the energy-efficiency potential of the remaining U.S. commercial building stock.
Learn more about what drives the adoption of building sensors and control systems.
Complexity with Quantum Computers Could Transform Energy Systems Modeling
NREL often commits the full strength of its supercomputer to modeling the power grid and other energy systems. These systems represent complexity at its richest, a characteristic shared by animal brains and economies. In a new research collaboration led by NREL, researchers have completed the first complexity analysis using an even more powerful 23-qubit quantum computer. This first step opens the possibility of advanced analysis and breakthrough insights as the field of quantum computing develops.
Editorial: Protecting Power System Frequency With Increasing Distributed Energy Resources
As distributed energy resources (DERs) are increasingly integrated into the grid, understanding how long it takes for devices to communicate with control centers and the impacts to maintaining stable frequency on the grid becomes more critical. In the first installment of NREL's "Tell Me Something Grid" series, grid analysts Xin Fang and Wenbo Wang share their thoughts on cyber-physical dynamics with increasing DERs, including how it impacts maintaining stable frequency on the grid.
Learn more about protecting power system frequency with increasing DERs.
What's the Damage? New Customer Damage Function (CDF) Calculator Estimates Costs of an Electric Grid Outage
Power outages can incur significant costs: lost data, spoilage of perishable food, business interruption, a downturn in productivity, disruption to critical services, and more. NREL researchers have released a free, publicly available tool to help site managers understand their vulnerabilities and measure the monetary benefits of solutions such as a backup power system. "By illustrating cost and impact via the CDF Calculator, agencies can prioritize investments to mitigate risk and improve resilience," explains NREL researcher Nicholas Gilroy. "We developed a web-based tool that provides a responsive and modern interface to support federal decision makers."
Learn about the applications of the CDF Calculator and how to use it.
Register Now for NREL's 4th ADMS Test Bed Workshop
Join us live and in person at NREL's South Table Mountain Campus for the fourth Advanced
Distribution Management System (ADMS) Test Bed Workshop. The event will include presentations
and laboratory demonstrations on use cases highlighting fault location, isolation,
and service restoration and the delivery of bulk grid services from distribution resources.
Learn more about the workshop and register to attend.
Finding Pathways to the Great Challenge Ahead: Achieving 100% Clean U.S. Electricity by 2035
Achieving a decarbonized power sector is no easy feat, but a new landmark analysis by NREL is guiding researchers toward that destination by 2035. In a recent blog post, NREL Associate Laboratory Director of Energy Systems Integration Juan Torres discusses the analysis, which lays out several pathways to 100% clean electricity, and the associated challenges and variables. "Not everything goes ideally in the real world," Torres said. "Our analysts understand that, and that's why they examined the four scenarios capturing a range of possible uncertainties."
Check out the Great Challenge Ahead blog.
Electric Vehicle Cyber Testing Event at NREL Expands to More Participants, Wider Validation
For the second time this year, automotive vendors and manufacturers gathered at NREL to evaluate cybersecurity for electric vehicles and chargers. Like the first event in April, participants ran tests that validated a novel method of securing the connection between electric vehicles, charging stations, and charge network operations. This phase saw 10 times as many test scenarios performed by a global working group organized by the nonprofit SAE International. The expanded cohort included Eonti, Ford Motor Co., Rivian, Shell Global Solutions, BMW, Electrify America, EVGo, TEPCO, ChargePoint, BTC Power, and Zerova Technologies (Phihong).
This type of precompetitive collaboration, using NREL’s neutral research facilities, is helping protect all companies and equipment providers from cyber risks. Even participants that did not bring technology to test found value in observing and conversing with industry peers working toward the common goal of de-risking and standardizing an approach to electric vehicle charging system security policies.
During the event, participants confirmed that vehicles and charging components would handle both valid and invalid security certificates correctly. This required successful application of a Public Key Infrastructure framework designed and implemented by cybersecurity solution providers Eonti and DigiCert. Earlier this year, companies strived to initiate a single charging event with valid certificates, while during the September event they tested many more scenarios using refined software code and a diverse set of chargers, thus moving the implementation closer to being an operational environment.
NREL and SAE will continue to convene precompetitive working groups, with NREL intent to host even more advanced security assessments, including testing effective cyber defense strategies against simulated adversarial attacks.
To get involved with upcoming electric vehicle-cybersecurity opportunities and events, contact Tony Markel.
Publications Roundup
NREL's final report for a groundbreaking project describes how distribution grid data can be gathered extensively at low cost, helping to monitor and manage the increasingly distributed electric grid. The project was launched by the DOE Office of Electricity Technology Commercialization Fund to develop ubiquitous grid monitoring via the broadband cable television network, which already contains many thousands of grid voltage sensors and passes close to more than 95% of all U.S. properties. Although NREL has other research efforts on the topic, this project succeeded in developing a new standard for sensing grid power quality and communications, developing a standard-compliant sensing system for use by utilities and others, and dramatically improving the spatiotemporal scale of broadband-based monitoring that NREL and a commercial partner are demonstrating.
Share