DER-Aware Grid Orchestration and Service Restoration for Enhanced Distribution Resilience
This presentation provides an overview of our work on DER-aware grid orchestration and service restoration.
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SEARCH · Engineering Papers
Results for “grid resiliency”
Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
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Cost-Effective Thermally Activated Building Systems to Support a Power Grid System With High Penetrations Of As-Available Renewable Energy Resources
With a goal to reduce the energy cost for building operation as well as to support renewable energy sources (RES) for the power grid reliability, quality, resilience, and dispatchability, this project developed and demonstrated a novel thermally activated building envelope system that integrates Phase Change Material (PCM)-based Thermal Energy Storage (TES) and the hydronic activation into the building envelope. The main objectives of this study are: 1) to design and laboraorty-test a novel thermally activated building envelope system that integrate PCM-based TES and the hydronic activation into building envelope, and 2) to exploit this new system to significantly reduce the energy cost of operating buildings and manage and support renewable energy sources (RES), e.g., solar and wind for the power grid reliability, quality, resilience, and dispatchability. To achieve the project objectives, a new low-cost, fire-retardant PCM packaging technology (CenoPCM) was developed specifically for high-volume building applications.
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Near-Term Reliability and Resilience (NTRR) (Final Report)
The Near-Term Reliability and Resiliency (NTRR) was awarded in December 2020 as an inter-lab project to examine the reliability and resilience of the electricity grid and natural gas transportation availability. The project builds on studies conducted by The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and other non-governmental research and operational focused on reliability and resilience analyses challenges. The research was conceived to address near-term scenarios (within 10 years), when many local and regional policy transitions could begin to impact grid reliability, resilience, and supporting infrastructure availability. To integrate the natural gas interdependency, the team began with the generating capacity and demand projections from the 2020 NERC Long-Term Reliability Assessment and the Bulk Electric System (BES) transmission topologies defined in the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) Anchor Data Set, Eastern Interconnection Reliability Assessment Group Multi-Regional Modeling Working Group (ERAG/MMWG) Data Set, the team calculated baseline regional power sector gas demands from present electricity delivery year through the end of delivery year 2030/31 by applying security constrained economic dispatch. This demand was compiled along with demand projections for regional residential, commercial, and industrial natural gas demands from the most recent Energy Information Administration (EIA) Annual Energy Outlook Reference Case into Deloitte’s MarketBuilder® North American Gas Model. Through the application of these demands, MarketBuilder® was projected the topology of natural gas flows in the natural gas pipeline network across the interconnected North American system along with regional natural gas prices that may be seen by market participants in future years Additionally, contingencies and sensitivities focused on the built models of the Eastern Interconnection (EI) and Western Interconnection (WI). They address challenges from the following with the outcomes being an identification of performance under the extreme conditions and an identification of potential grid weaknesses that should be addressed to mitigate the reduced performance and improve the resilience and reliability of the specific regions as well as the National Grid: • Weather events including extreme heat, extreme cold, high wind, no wind, wind and solar forecasting errors, and wildfires. • Gas availability, factoring in supply disruption (contractual and physical), seasonal availability constraints, and infrastructure limitations; and • Transmission availability and congestion.
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A Framework for Evaluating the Resilience Contribution of Solar PV and Battery Storage on the Grid
Motivated by decreased cost and climate change concerns, penetration of solar photovoltaic (PV) and battery energy storage has been continually increasing. The variability in solar generation assets has led to many challenges for utilities and researchers. Therefore, there is increasing interest in the area of resilience of the grid and contribution from its assets. This paper describes a proposed framework for evaluating the resilience contribution of solar generation and battery storage. The metric provides a quantifiable adaptive capacity measure with uncertainty for the contribution assets proved to the bulk grid. A case study using long and short-term solar generation, with and without battery storage, demonstrates the framework and provides useful insight to the resilience solar and battery storage assets contribute.
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Region-Based Stability Analysis of Resilient Distribution Systems with Hybrid Grid-Forming and Grid-Following Inverters
In this paper, distribution system stability considering mixed grid-forming (GFM) and grid-following (GFL) inverters is discussed. A holistic small-signal model of the distribution feeder accommodating both GFM and GFL inverters is derived. In contrast to conventional point-by-point stability analysis, a region-based stability assessment approach is proposed and implemented to evaluate small-signal system stability with both GFM and GFL controls. Furthermore, to enhance the computational efficiency, an Artificial Intelligence (AI) assisted Kernel Ridge Regression (KRR) approach is developed to obtain the stability region boundary. Therefore, with the derived stability region, the impact of critical parameters on system stability is intuitively shown, and more importantly, the relationship between the maximum penetration level and the corresponding feasible range of the selected control parameters can be quantified. The proposed approach has been validated using MATLAB/Simulink.
grid-following↗
Spoofing Resilient State Estimation for the Power Grid Using an Extended Kalman Filter
Not provided.
Engineering↗
Valuing Demand Flexibility During a Grid Disturbance: A Granular Approach to Resilience Valuation
As research continues to investigate how demand flexibility can aid in power system resilience so does the need for an approach to determine the value of resilience. This work utilizes visual modeling principles to model the value exchanges that take place within the system. These models can be used in analysis design as the foundation of a valuation analysis for each participant in the system. Utilizing a consistent approach for valuation will allow for different approaches in improving system resilience to be compared against each other in terms of economic outcomes of participants.
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Enhancing Responsiveness and Resilience with Distributed Applications in the Grid
A number of trends are increasing the variability in electric power systems resulting in a need for new approaches in control. The increased variability is originating from distributed energy resources and an increasing demand for personalized energy choice from customers grid-edge. Electricity distribution systems continue to incorporate increasing numbers of intelligent end devices, automated switchgear, and sensing and measurement devices which are providing more visibility and control at the grid-edge. Traditional distribution system planning and operations techniques must evolve to meet the new complexity while continuing to deliver safe, reliable, and cost-effective energy. New technologies are enabling new capabilities at the grid-edge to respond to these needs. Distributed applications can deploy intelligence across the distribution grid with peer-to-peer communications and a shared data context for their local environment. These applications can cooperate with each other to respond quickly to changing grid conditions. This enables a layered coordination framework spanning the centralized Advanced Distribution Management System functions with wide area visibility to these new distributed applications running at intelligent devices and meters throughout the distribution system. This paper describes an open-architecture, open-source system approach for commercial scale integration of devices and intelligence at the grid-edge.
Ogle, James P.↗
PMU and Communication Infrastructure Restoration for Post-Attack Observability Recovery of Power Grids
This paper is concerned about recovering the observability of cyber-physical power grids after massive cyber attacks, which helps to achieve the cyber-physical resilience of the grids. For recovering the observability of the grid, the measurability of the Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs) and the connectivity of the communication network are needed to be restored. The PMU and communication infrastructure restoration problem is jointly formulated as a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) problem to minimize the observability loss of the grid over time after a cyber attack while considering the constraint of limited resources. The efficacy of the proposed optimal restoration strategy is verified by comparing with heuristic methods on the IEEE 57-bus system.
cyber security↗
Regulatory Mechanisms to Enable Investments in Electric Utility Resilience
In 2019, Sandia National Laboratories contracted Synapse Energy Economics (Synapse) to research the integration of community and electric utility resilience investment planning as part of the Designing Resilient Communities: A Consequence-Based Approach for Grid Investment (DRC) project. Synapse produced a series of reports to explore the challenges and opportunities in several key areas, including benefit-cost analysis, performance metrics, microgrids, and regulatory mechanisms to promote investments in electric system resilience. This report focuses on regulatory mechanisms to improve resilience. Regulatory mechanisms that improve resilience are approaches that electric utility regulators can use to align utility, customer, and third-party investments with regulatory, ratepayer, community, and other important stakeholder interests and priorities for resilience. Cost-of-service regulation may fail to provide utilities with adequate guidance or incentives regarding community priorities for infrastructure hardening and disaster recovery. The application of other types of regulatory mechanisms to resilience investments can help. This report: characterizes regulatory objective as they apply to resilience; identifies several regulatory mechanisms that are used or can be adapted to improve the resilience of the electric system--including performance-based regulation, integrated planning, tariffs and programs to leverage private investment, alternative lines of business for utilities, enhanced cost recovery, and securitization; provides a case study of each regulatory mechanism; summarizes findings across the case studies; and suggests how these regulatory mechanisms might be improved and applied to resilience moving forward. In this report, we assess the effectiveness of a range of utility regulatory mechanisms at evaluating and prioritizing utility investments in grid resilience. First, we characterize regulatory objectives which underly all regulatory mechanisms. We then describe seven types of regulatory mechanisms that can be used to improve resilience--including performance-based regulation, integrated planning, tariffs and programs to leverage private investment, alternative lines of business for utilities, enhanced cost recovery, and securitization--and provide a case study for each one. We summarize our findings on the extent to which these regulatory mechanisms have supported resilience to date. We conclude with suggestions on how these regulatory mechanisms might be improved and applied to resilience moving forward.
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A Framework to Design Consumer-Centric Operational Strategies for Resilience Enhancement
Extreme temperature-related events like heat waves or cold snaps can significantly stress the power distribution grid as electricity demand spikes leading to brownouts or blackouts if not managed properly. In addition, such extreme events can exacerbate inequity, with vulnerable populations (for example, houses with poor insulation, located in non-critical zones, and lack of local resources) at greater risk. There is a growing deployment of distribution systems automation technologies such as advanced metering infrastructure, sensors, and automated control systems to enhance the visibility of the entire distribution grid while meeting resilience objectives. Here, this paper proposes a framework for investigating how automation can improve the distribution system's resilience and ensure customers' health and safety during such extremes. The proposed framework's efficacy will be demonstrated for the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) during winter storm Uri with varying levels of distribution automation technologies such as feeder isolation using smart switches, remote outage signals using advanced meters, and comfort-aware outage using advanced analytics and communication. Simulation results show that an outage strategy involving advanced grid technology and communication can reduce the occupant exposure to severe cold by 93% and, simultaneously, reduce expected energy not served by 73.2% when compared against feeder isolation.
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Modeling the Impact of Flexible CHP on the Future Electric Grid In California
Combined heat and power (CHP) systems provide electricity and process heat at more than 4,400 industrial and commercial facilities across the United States. Typically fueled with natural gas, a CHP system combines a prime mover (such as a reciprocating engine) with a generator and heat recovery equipment, allowing operation at very high efficiencies (65–85%). Traditionally, CHP systems have been configured to serve local electrical and thermal loads at the sites where they are deployed. Units are sized to ensure a high capacity factor for the equipment, and the electricity generated tends to be used on site. CHP units in the United States already generate over 12% of the nation’s electricity. However, CHP’s potential benefits could be much greater if power generated could be used beyond the site, because the analysis was performed under the assumption that sites could use all the thermal output. Analysis of a few key sectors confirmed that this assumption is valid (for more information, see Appendix E). Those benefits could include improved grid reliability and resilience, as well as lower-cost options for providing energy and other grid services. The potential benefits also align well with grid modernization objectives, as shown in Combined heat and power (CHP) systems provide electricity and process heat at more than 4,400 industrial and commercial facilities across the United States., and greater electrification of loads, driven by carbon reduction priorities.
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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.
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Decoding Resilience by Modeling Outage and Restoration Processes in Distribution Grids: A Pittsburgh Case Study
Climate-induced extreme weather events, such as floods and heatwaves, pose significant challenges to the resilience of urban power distribution grids. This paper examines the outage and restoration dynamics of Pittsburgh's power grid during the flood event in April 2024 and three heatwaves in June, July, and August 2024. We introduce a comprehensive modeling framework that integrates outage and restoration processes, enabling the quantification of resilience metrics, including total customer-hours of power outage, maximum residual values, and restoration durations across various ZIP codes. Our analysis highlights spatial disparities in outage impacts and restoration efficiencies, with ZIP Code 15222 experiencing the highest cumulative disruptions, while ZIP Code 15217 shows lower susceptibility. By linking statistical trends with weather events, this study underscores the critical need for targeted infrastructure upgrades and advanced restoration strategies. Furthermore, the proposed framework offers valuable insights for planning and managing resilient power systems in the face of increasing climate stress.
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Artificial Intelligence Techniques in Smart Grid: A Survey
The smart grid is enabling the collection of massive amounts of high-dimensional and multi-type data about the electric power grid operations, by integrating advanced metering infrastructure, control technologies, and communication technologies. However, the traditional modeling, optimization, and control technologies have many limitations in processing the data; thus, the applications of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques in the smart grid are becoming more apparent. This survey presents a structured review of the existing research into some common AI techniques applied to load forecasting, power grid stability assessment, faults detection, and security problems in the smart grid and power systems. It also provides further research challenges for applying AI technologies to realize truly smart grid systems. Finally, this survey presents opportunities of applying AI to smart grid problems. The paper concludes that the applications of AI techniques can enhance and improve the reliability and resilience of smart grid systems.
energy systems↗
Enabling Load Following Capability in the Transatomic Power MSR
This project is dedicated towards designing a fuel processing system that enables liquid-fueled molten salt reactors (MSR) to load follow by removing the dissolved xenon in the fuel salt. As one of the Gen-IV nuclear reactor concepts, the molten salt reactor receives increasing development interests in the recent years. One distinguishing feature of the liquid-fueled molten salt reactor is its improved ability to operate in a load-following mode by including the unique online fission product removal system. Load-following means that the reactor changes its power output based on the demand on the grid. Most of the current operating nuclear reactors have limited load-following ability and operate as the base load on the grid. Due to the rapid increase of solar energy, the requirement on load-following capacity is significantly increased because of the varying power output of the solar panels, yet the traditional load-following capacity is expected to decrease as the decarbonization of the grid continues. Therefore, the ability to perform load-following operation for the nuclear reactors will greatly enhance the resilience of the grid and make nuclear energy more economically competitive. This load-following feature is included in many commercial molten salt reactor designs, such as the designs by Transatomic Power, Terrestrial Energy, and Flibe Energy. Unfortunately, detailed analysis of the fuel processing system for commercial scale MSRs is still lacking, as well as how the fuel processing quantitively impacts the load-following operation. Moreover, experimental data for many of the underlying physics of fuel processing is limited. This project aims to pave the way for the fuel processing technology to advance to the commercial stage by performing combined experimental and simulation research. During the project period, four interconnected aspects of the development of the fuel processing system in liquid-fueled molten salt reactors are investigated. These aspects are the simulation and analysis of the fission product removal system, the fuel cycle simulation, the coupled reactor neutronics and thermal hydraulics transient simulation, and the gaseous fission product removal experiment. Multiphase CFD simulations are performed for components of the processing systems, and simplified air-water experiments are carried out to provide validation data. It is concluded that the CFD simulation can satisfactorily predict the system level performance of the components, and engineering models are constructed based on this success. Fuel cycle analysis is performed for two representative MSR design, the MSBR and the Transatomic Power MSR. Open-source code SaltProc is developed to incorporate the unique fuel processing system of the MSRs. It is concluded that the removal of xenon is essential for load-following operation in thermal spectrum MSR and Molten Salt Breeder Reactor. For the Transatomic Power MSR, the xenon poisoning effect is negligible due to its relatively fast neutron spectrum, though the overall fuel cycle economics still benefits from the removal of xenon. Coupled reactor neutronics and thermal hydraulics transient simulation is performed specifically for the Transatomic Power MSR. It is concluded that the reactor core design could perform power ramping fast enough to satisfy load-following operation. Combining the findings from each aspect, it is concluded that the load-following operation of a thermal neutron MSR is dependent upon the removal of xenon, which could be achieved for a commercial sized reactor using continuous inert gas sparging in a separate system with reasonable dimensions.
11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
Quantifying Technical Diversity Benefits of Wind as a Distributed Energy Resource
Distributed energy resources are increasingly used in power distribution systems and microgrids to supply cost competitive power, improve resilience, and provide a host of grid services. Diversifying variable renewable resources (e.g., by combining wind with solar) can increase energy usage efficiency and improve system resilience. However, when grid optimization and resilience studies consider multiple renewable resources, diversity benefits are usually captured only implicitly in the results of location-specific economic optimization. In this paper, metrics are introduced to express the technical value of resource diversity independent of jurisdiction-specific market structures. Specifically, marginal energy usage efficiency metrics are developed to quantify the ability of new distributed generation to produce useful energy and an incremental sustainable ride through metric is developed to express improvement in grid outage ride through capability. While there are economic implications for each of these metrics, the metrics themselves are technically-driven and could be used as components of a technical figure of merit that could be used to inform policy actions, such as development of resource-specific incentives and time-of-use tariff designs. Each of these metrics is demonstrated using balance-of-energy simulations that highlight the benefits of improving resource diversity.
Reiman, Andrew P.↗
Understanding the Value of Energy Storage for Power System Reliability and Resilience Applications
Abstract Purpose of Review The need for energy storage in the electrical grid has grown in recent years in response to a reduced reliance on fossil fuel baseload power, added intermittent renewable investment, and expanded adoption of distributed energy resources. While the methods and models for valuing storage use cases have advanced significantly in recent years, the value of enhanced resilience remains an open research question. Recent Findings The findings of the recent research indicate that energy storage provides significant value to the grid, with median benefit values for specific use cases ranging from under $10/kW-year for voltage support to roughly $100/kW-year for capacity and frequency regulation services. While the value of lost load is used widely to estimate the benefits of mitigating short-duration outages, reaching as high as $719/kilowatt-year, there is no consensus when it comes to monetizing the value of improving grid resilience. Summary This paper presents a use case taxonomy for energy storage and uses the taxonomy to conduct a meta-analysis of an extensive set of energy storage valuation studies. It reviews several approaches for monetizing reliability and resiliency services and presents a proposed approach for valuing resiliency for energy storage investments.
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