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At least 415 records · Page 23

Architecture for Co-Simulation of Transportation and Distribution Systems with Electric Vehicle Charging at Scale in the San Francisco Bay Area

This work describes the Grid-Enhanced, Mobility-Integrated Network Infrastructures for Extreme Fast Charging (GEMINI) architecture for the co-simulation of distribution and transportation systems to evaluate EV charging impacts on electric distribution systems of a large metropolitan area and the surrounding rural regions with high fidelity. The current co-simulation is applied to Oakland and Alameda, California, and in future work will be extended to the full San Francisco Bay Area. It uses the HELICS co-simulation framework to enable parallel instances of vetted grid and transportation software programs to interact at every model timestep, allowing high-fidelity simulations at a large scale. This enables not only the impacts of electrified transportation systems across a larger interconnected collection of distribution feeders to be evaluated, but also the feedbacks between the two systems, such as through control systems, to be captured and compared. The findings are that with moderate passenger EV adoption rates, inverter controls combined with some distribution system hardware upgrades can maintain grid voltages within ANSI C.84 range A limits of 0.95 to 1.05 p.u. without smart charging. However, EV charging control may be required for higher levels of charging or to reduce grid upgrades, and this will be explored in future work.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Adaptive Control Algorithm to Adjust Settings in Photovoltaic Inverters for Electric Grid Cybersecurity (DERAC) v0.1

Volt-VAR and Volt-Watt functionality in photovoltaic (PV) smart inverters provide mechanisms to ensure system voltage magnitudes and power factors remain within acceptable limits. However, these control functions can become unstable, introducing oscillations in system voltages when not appropriately configured or maliciously altered during a cyberattack. In the event that Volt-VAR and Volt-Watt control functions in a portion of PV smart inverters in a distribution grid are unstable, the proposed adaptation scheme utilizes the remaining and stably-behaving PV smart inverters and other Distributed Energy Resources to mitigate the effect of the instability in real-time. The adaptation mechanism is entirely decentralized, model-free, communication-free, and requires virtually no external configuration. This repository provides code to simulate the algorithm in experiments on the IEEE 37 node test feeder.

Arnold, Daniel↗

Smart technologies enable homes to be efficient and interactive with the grid

Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers compare two different approaches to test how advanced, energy-efficient building technologies such as smart thermostats, heat pump water heaters, and advanced heat pump HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) can be optimized within a home and connected at a neighborhood-scale load to a community microgrid in the Alabama Power Smart Neighborhood located in Hoover. Working with Southern Company and Alabama Power, ORNL researchers are pioneering that future where smart homes and smart neighborhoods can benefit both homeowners and utilities, by reducing energy consumption by 44% and peak demand by 34%.This project is one of two neighborhoods in the U.S Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Connected Neighborhood project, supported by Building Technologies Office , where ORNL researchers leverages DOE investment in micro-grids and responsive, flexible building loads research to improve grid reliability – a goal of DOE’s Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings (GEB) Initiative. Researchers control the neighborhood and microgrid to enable utilities achieve their desired load and cost profiles while ensuring the comfort of homeowners in the Smart Neighborhood. This transactive control approach maximizes the utilization of technical resources of the microgrid and controllable loads, while reducing costs for both the homeowners and Alabama Power. These tests partially seek to determine a more precise range of tolerance with respect to occupant comfort as researchers work to facilitate customer acceptance and perception of new building technologies that enable energy savings.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

FEST: Facility Energy Saving and Securing Technology Using Multi-Source Data: (Milestone 2 Report)

This project aims to demonstrate three technologies developed in-house at LLNL and University of Michigan-Dearborn (UMD), at a military site, including i) Grid Data Crossing (called GriD-Xing) for increasing smart meter data usability, ii) Facility Energy Optimization (called Facility E-GO) for improving facility energy efficiency in both operation and planning perspectives, and iii) Co-simulation tool (called Co-Sim) for enhancing smart meter and energy facility networks resilience and security. In this report, Millstone 2 - Integration A: Integrate GriD-Xing and facility optimization tools is documented.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Co-Simulation of Electric Power Distribution Systems and Buildings including Ultra-Fast HVAC Models and Optimal DER Control

Smart homes and virtual power plant (VPP) controls are growing fields of research with potential for improved electric power grid operation. A novel testbed for the co-simulation of electric power distribution systems and distributed energy resources (DERs) is employed to evaluate VPP scenarios and propose an optimization procedure. DERs of specific interest include behind-the-meter (BTM) solar photovoltaic (PV) systems as well as heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems. The simulation of HVAC systems is enabled by a machine learning procedure that produces ultra-fast models for electric power and indoor temperature of associated buildings that are up to 133 times faster than typical white-box implementations. Hundreds of these models, each with different properties, are randomly populated into a modified IEEE 123-bus test system to represent a typical U.S. community. Advanced VPP controls are developed based on the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) 2045 standard to leverage HVAC systems as generalized energy storage (GES) such that BTM solar PV is better utilized locally and occurrences of distribution system power peaks are reduced, while also maintaining occupant thermal comfort. An optimization is performed to determine the best control settings for targeted peak power and total daily energy increase minimization with example peak load reductions of 25+%.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Smart Inverters for Seamless Reconnection of Isolated Residential Microgrids to Utility Grid

This paper proposes an approach to achieve seamless reconnection of isolated residential microgrids to utility grid. Any abnormal condition on the grid side results in isolating the residential microgrid from utility grid, and giving the full responsibility of supplying household loads to local distributed generation (DG) units. However, after resolving the abnormal condition on the grid side, the residential microgrid needs to seamlessly reconnect to the main grid. To this end, a seamless transition algorithm is presented which monitors the system condition in real time, and coordinates the operation of all inverter-based DG units in residential microgrid before reconnection to the main grid. A modified control scheme is proposed for single-phase inverters which turns them into smart inverters enable to interact with seamless transition algorithm. The proposed approach synchronizes each phase voltage with its respective grid-side voltage in order to seamlessly reconnect the residential microgrid to the main grid. Case study results are carried out in PSCAD/EMTDC environment to verify the validity of proposed method.

Pilehvar, Mohsen S.↗

Electric Vehicles: A Sustainable Solution for Transportation Systems

The imperative for strong and rapid emissions reductions to mitigate global warming and enhance air quality necessitates a transition to net-zero emissions. This shift requires significant changes throughout the entire energy supply-demand ecosystems, tailored to various sectors. Transportation stands as the least-diversified energy sector and the largest source of U.S. GHG emissions. As the primary enabler for vehicle decarbonization when paired with clean electricity, electric vehicles (EVs) will play a pivotal role in the future. This talk summarizes current status of EV technologies and markets, future projections, and opportunities associated with a conversion to EV for all on-road vehicles. Moreover, EVs are poised to drive substantial growth in electricity demand and presents a unique opportunity to provide demand-side flexibility that is crucial for future renewable-dominated electricity systems. Smart integration of EVs can strengthen the grid, reducing costs and enhancing resilience.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS,POWER TRANSMISSION AND↗

Unbundling Smart Meter Services Through Spatio-Temporal Decomposition Agents in DER-rich Environment

Smart meters and the advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) facilitate distribution system operators (DSOs) to gather information on energy consumption at the customer level. With the increasing penetration of building-level intermittent distributed energy resources (DERs) behind the meter, DER information is not available to DSOs. At the same time, smart meter enables users to participate in grid, with real-time information. Information for behind the meter is needed by user to coordinate building level assets for maximum benefits. The concept of unbundled smart meter (USM) needs agents to decompose smart meter measurements to provide service to DSO as well as customers. In this paper, we propose a Spatio-Temporal Decomposition Agent (STDA) for USM based on Artificial Intelligence (AI). STDA can help users optimize their energy usage, help DSO to utilize building assets for the grid operation. The energy usage strategy developed by STDA is suitable for different users, and can be customized by deep learning (DL) models according to the different energy consumption habits of each user. The power prediction performance results of various DL models and evaluation using a set of data from a Hawaii utility is presented. Furthermore, STDA integration with Home Energy management Systems (HEMS) to manage resources is presented and validated. STDA pre-processes the measurements before model training, and provides the spatio-temporal decomposed forecasting.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Power Electronics for Electrolyzer Applications to Enable Grid Services

The Power Electronics for Electrolyzer Applications to Enable Grid Services project aims to develop smart converter for dedicated electrolyzer applications to enable grid services via standardization of control interfaces between hydrogen electrolyzer system low-level controls and power converter controls. The project provides additional revenue source for electrolyzer through participation in grid services and reduces the cost of deployment and controls integration through standardization and risk due to supply-chain issues. It also enables the adoption of green hydrogen via standardizing the integration of energy storage, renewables, and distributed energy resources. Furthermore, the work provides a controlled validation environment to evaluate scalable integration solution for hydrogen production technologies, improves overall reliability and maintainability of the electrolyzer system for grid applications, and directly contributes to DOE HFTO's "Hydrogen Shot" goal.

energy transitions↗

Recursive Dynamic Compressive Sensing in Smart Distribution Systems

With a transition to a smarter grid, we are witnessing a significant growth in smart metering infrastructure and sensor deployment in the distribution system. The underlying communication infrastructure is stressed due to the large volume of data that is generated by the smart meters/sensors. Furthermore, real time operations such as state estimation and control are impaired due to the lack of reliable aggregation of the data. In this paper, we exploit the underlying sparsity in grid data to implement two recursive dynamic compressive sensing (CS) approaches-streaming modified weighted-`1 CS and Kalman filtered CS. These approaches aim to reconstruct the sparse signal using the current underdetermined measurements and the prior information about the sparse signal and its support set. Slow signal and support change is in distribution grid data is validated using Pecan Street data. Both the IEEE 34 node test feeder system and PecanStreet data are considered as two examples to validate the superior performance of the two recursive CS techniques relative to classic CS.

Karimi, Hazhar Sufi↗

Securing Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings (GEB) through Cyber Defense and Resilient System (CYDRES)

The DOE CYDRES project is driven by the urgent need to address critical research gaps in the domain of cyber-physical security of smart buildings, including Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings (GEBs). CYDRES, a real-time advanced building resilient platform, aims to enhance the cyber-attack-immune capabilities of buildings through multi-layered prevention, detection, and adaptation mechanisms. CYDRES consists of five key modules: a multi-layer network analyzer, an Automatic Fault Detection, Diagnosis, and Prognosis (AFDDP) framework, an intelligent mode selector, a cyber-resilient control framework, and a situation awareness platform. The Network Analyzer employs a data-driven framework that includes a protocol state learning tool and a CRF (Conditional Random Field) command validator. In Hardware-In-the-Loop (HIL) testbeds, it achieved 100% detection accuracy with a false alarm rate of 3%, validating its efficacy in identifying selected cyber-attacks. The AFDDP framework leverages pattern matching, PCA (Principal Component Analysis)-based strategies, and a DBN (Dynamic Bayesian Network)-based fault diagnosis approach to pinpoint the causes of physical system abnormalities using Building Automation System (BAS) data. In HIL experiments, the AFDDP module attained a detection accuracy of over 95% with a false alarm rate below 7%. Additionally, the fault detector utilized machine learning (Random Forest) and deep learning (Multi-Layer Perceptron) methods with acoustic sensor data to achieve a 100% fault detection accuracy in Heating, Ventilation, and Air-Conditioning (HVAC) equipment. The Mode Selector offered real-time impact analysis, allowing immediate actions to protect BASs in the face of emerging threats. The cyber-resilient control framework included an adaptive Model Predictive Control (MPC) and a measurement compensator, reducing temperature violations by up to 94% and improving the total demand flexibility by up to 70% in HIL experiments. Such HIL experiments covered a cyber-attack case and a physical fault case, showcasing CYDRES’ efficiency in maintaining operational continuity during threats. The situation awareness platform in Grafana enhanced real-time threat detection and response visualization, augmenting the operational awareness for building operators. CYDRES demonstrated high technical effectiveness in various test scenarios, particularly in HIL environments. The project's phased development approach ensured efficient use of resources, highlighting its practical feasibility and readiness for commercialization. By enhancing the security and resilience of building operations, CYDRES represents a significant advance in mitigating risks associated with cyber-physical systems, thereby enhancing public confidence in the safety of modern building infrastructure. Future directions for the project include expanding testing protocols, refining AFDDP methodologies, exploring more comprehensive resilient control strategies, and testing in real commercial buildings.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Power Converter Topologies for Electrolyzer Applications to Enable Electric Grid Services

Hydrogen electrolyzers, with their operational flexibility, can be configured as smart dynamic loads which can provide grid services and facilitate the integration of more renewable energy sources into the electrical grid. However, to enable this ability, the electrolyzer system should be able to control both active and reactive power in coordination with the low-level controller of the electrolyzer via the power electronics system interface between the utility grid and electrolyzer. This paper discusses power converter topologies and the control scheme of this power electronics interface for electrolyzer applications to enable electricity grid services. For the sake of unity, in this paper, we consider the power converter system interfacing the utility grid at the line-to-line root mean square (RMS) value of 480 VAC-60 Hz and supplying to the 3500 A-750 kW PEM electrolyzer stack.

electrolyzer↗

Energy Systems Decarbonization: Perspectives on Electric Vehicles and Grid Integration

The imperative for strong and rapid emissions reductions to mitigate global warming and enhance air quality necessitates a transition to net-zero emissions. This shift requires significant changes throughout the entire energy supply-demand ecosystems, tailored to various sectors. Transportation stands as the least-diversified energy sector and the largest source of U.S. GHG emissions. As the primary catalyst for vehicle decarbonization when paired with clean electricity, electric vehicles (EVs) will play a pivotal role in the future. EVs are poised to drive substantial growth in electricity demand and presents a unique opportunity to provide demand-side flexibility that is crucial for future renewable-dominated electricity systems. Smart integration of EVs can strengthen the grid, reducing costs and enhancing resilience. At NREL, laying the scientific groundwork to actualize this vision: our research is finding ways for EVs to support grid planning and operations across several timescales and to fully exploit the synergies between EVs and renewables.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS,POWER TRANSMISSION AND↗

AI-Driven Smart Community Control for Accelerating PV Adoption and Enhancing Grid Resilience

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has launched a Connected Communities program that supports projects that expand DOE's network of grid-interactive, efficient building communities nationwide. As an early pilot of Connected Communities, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and its partners have developed and demonstrated a community-scale, hierarchical control solution to address the potential grid issues arising from high penetration of solar photovoltaics (PV) as well as to improve grid reliability and resilience in this residential community. A field pilot study has been performed at an affordable housing development called the Basalt Vista Community, which was built for school teachers and other professionals in the local workforce and represents an autonomous energy grid with all-electric, energy-efficient homes. With no natural gas line in the community, this is the first all-electric net-zero community in rural Colorado. In the field pilot study, NREL has validated the performance of the hierarchical control solution, which consists of NREL's foresee home energy management systems (HEMS) and community aggregators, in increasing demand flexibility and self-consuming PV, reducing potential over-voltages, and supporting critical loads during emergency events. In this presentation, we will present the methodology, simulation and field pilot results, and lessons learned from the project.

all-electric community↗

Practical Implementation of GPU-based Computing at the Grid Edge for Resilience Scenarios

This paper presents a practical implementation of GPU-accelerated computing at the grid edge to enhance power system resilience through next-generation smart meters. Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) systems rely predominantly on centralized processing architectures, which limit real-time response capabilities during grid disturbances. This work proposes the integration of GPU-enabled computational platforms directly within smart meter to enable local execution support for power system analytics, fault detection algorithms, and optimization routines. The proposed framework uses the Julia programming language to leverage highperformance parallel computing capabilities while maintaining code portability and development efficiency. We use two experimental scenarios to benchmark the computational feasibility of this approach: sparse linear system solutions representative of power flow analyses, and multi-stage production cost simulations incorporating unit commitment and economic dispatch operations. Results demonstrate that computationally intensive power system algorithms, such as those supporting resilience scenario calculations, can be effectively executed at the distribution edge using commercially available embedded GPU hardware. Keywords—GPU acceleration, edge computing, smart meters, grid resilience, AMI, resilience.

De Souza, Reubun [School of Electrical Engineering↗

Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings Support Federal Facility Decarbonization

The Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) plays a key role in helping agencies understand and meet energy-related goals, including those surrounding smart buildings technologies and grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs), which can support decarbonization. GEB enables demand flexibility that has the potential to reduce electrical infrastructure costs and transform the grid edge, where buildings connect to the power grid.

decarbonization↗

Demand Response in Residential Energy Code: Technical Brief

As buildings account for over 75% of U.S. electricity use, effectively managing their loads can greatly facilitate the transition towards a clean, reliable grid. Grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) combine efficiency and demand flexibility with smart technologies and communication to provide occupant comfort and productivity while serving the grid as a distributed energy resource (DER). In turn, GEBs can play a key role in ensuring access to an affordable, reliable, sustainable, and modern U.S. electric power system. Their national adoption could provide $\$$100-200 billion in U.S. electric power system cost savings over the next two decades. The associated reduction in CO 2 emissions is estimated at 6% per year by 2030 (DOE 2021). Building codes represent standard design practice in the construction industry and continually evolve to include advanced technologies and innovative practices. Historically, national model energy codes establish minimum efficiency requirements for new construction (ICC 2020). Expanding codes to support GEB capabilities is a pivotal step towards realizing demand flexibility in support of a clean grid by addressing capabilities to improve interoperability between smart building systems, the grid, and renewable energy resources. Realizing GEBs requires buildings with automated demand response (DR) capabilities that enable standardized communication with or control of, subject to explicit consumer consent, energy smart appliances or home energy management systems. This is achieved through direct or indirect (i.e., via an aggregator) communication between appliances and the electric grid. Energy codes can also support DR communication standardization and advance the deployment of building-integrated DERs such as energy storage, generation, and electric vehicles (EVs). Incorporating automated DR capabilities in energy codes provides many benefits to the consumers. Specifically, it aligns building electric load demand with intermittent renewable energy source availability, decreases peak load on the electric grid, allows buildings to respond to utility price signals, supports electrical network reliability and market growth of products and processes aligned with clean economic growth. The incorporation of DR into the model residential energy codes was considered for both the 2021 and 2024 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) code development cycles. The approved DR measures in the 2021 cycle were removed in response to appeals (ICC 2020). Updated language was presented for consideration again for the 2024 IECC, where it was negotiated and again approved, and again removed in response to appeals (ICC 2024). This resulted in many sections, including sections on demand responsive controls, being moved to the credits options or an appendix as a voluntary application. This technical brief updates the proposed DR components such that they can be considered by states and local governments for direct incorporation into their codes, as well as for future IECC energy code development. The proposal refinements are intended to support consistency in approach and provide a degree of certainty for building owners, designers, contractors, manufacturers, and building and fire safety professionals. The scope of this technical brief includes three strategies for DR in residential buildings: 1) smart thermostats with demand-responsive control, 2) electric water heating incorporating demand-responsive controls and communication and 3) grid Integrated solar and energy storage systems.

2021 IECC↗

A New Method for the Accurate Calculation of Derivatives at Structured Multiblock Grid Singularities

The new Structured Mapping At Reduced dimension Topology elements (SMART) method for the accurate calculation of derivatives at multiblock structured grid block interfaces is presented. In the SMART method, a ’local’ curvilinear mapping is defined at each interface point, giving a consistent multidimensional definition of the derivatives. The resulting system of equations is overdetermined, and a least squares method is used to determine the value of the derivatives in the local coordinate system. In the special case of a nonsingular interface point, the SMART method automatically recovers the spatial differencing stencils used at the interior points in the neighboring grid blocks.

Computational Aeroacoustics↗