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DOE OSTI2023

State Energy Justice Roundtable Series: Energy Justice Metrics

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO), and National Governors Association (NGA) hosted a State Energy Justice Roundtable (Roundtable) in April 2022. Participants included federal and state decision-makers, members of community-based organizations, and subject-matter experts. The Roundtable members explored current state efforts to articulate and incorporate energy justice concerns into energy-related decision-making. Participants established connections with one another to better understand the current landscape of existing resources, learn about emerging efforts, and identify ongoing support opportunities for advancing energy justice.This paper is one of five authored by the host organizations on topics that were the focus of the Roundtable. Each paper summarizes key themes, emerging efforts, and group takeaways that were discussed at the Roundtable and should assist state members in developing and meeting their own state goals around energy justice. The papers all include the same discussions of background, introduction, and reading list so they can be read separately. Each paper is written from the perspective of one association and includes options for its members to take actions that could support more equitable state energy policies and programs. The five papers cover: (1) Participation in decision making (NARUC), (2) Customer affordability and arrearages (NARUC), (3) Energy justice metrics (NARUC), (4) Equity in clean energy research and development (NASEO), and (5) Equitable distributed energy resource (DER) access (NGA). The resources and recommendations listed in these papers are not meant to be exhaustive, as this field of study continues to evolve. Although this brief is focused on electricity, energy justice considerations extend to all energy needs and services, including the impact of energy extraction, processing, and distribution functions.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

DOE OSTI2023

State Energy Justice Roundtable Series: Customer Affordability and Arrearages

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC), National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO), and National Governors Association (NGA) hosted a State Energy Justice Roundtable (Roundtable) in April 2022. Participants included federal and state decision-makers, members of community-based organizations, and subject-matter experts. The Roundtable members explored current state efforts to articulate and incorporate energy justice concerns into energy-related decision-making. Participants established connections with one another to better understand the current landscape of existing resources, learn about emerging efforts, and identify ongoing support opportunities for advancing energy justice. This paper is one of five authored by the host organizations on topics that were the focus of the Roundtable. Each paper summarizes key themes, emerging efforts, and group takeaways that were discussed at the Roundtable and should assist state members in developing and meeting their own state goals around energy justice. The papers all include the same discussions of background, introduction, and reading list so they can be read separately. Each paper is written from the perspective of one association and includes options for its members to take actions that could support more equitable state energy policies and programs. The five papers cover: (1) Participation in decision making (NARUC) (2) Customer affordability and arrearages (NARUC) (3) Energy justice metrics (NARUC) (4) Equity in clean energy research and development (NASEO) (5) Equitable distributed energy resource (DER) access (NGA). The resources and recommendations listed in these papers are not meant to be exhaustive, as this field of study continues to evolve. Although this brief is focused on electricity, energy justice considerations extend to all energy needs and services, including the impact of energy extraction, processing, and distribution functions.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

DOE OSTI2023

Electric Vehicle Charging Management in Smart Energy Communities to Increase Renewable Energy Hosting Capacity

Abnormal climates due to global warming have emerged as a big concern in the global community. To mitigate climate change and achieve sustainability, distributed energy resources (DERs), including solar and wind, have been recently deployed in power systems. As the penetration level of DERs has increased, however, it caused a multitude of issues in the power systems, such as voltage fluctuation in the distribution network limiting renewable hosting capacity. On the other hand, the electric vehicle (EV) industry is rapidly growing to facilitate the transition to a carbon-neutral community, illuminating the potential of EVs as a flexible grid asset to mitigate some of the issues and improve grid operation, if properly exploited. To explore the potential of EVs, this paper proposes an EV scheduling strategy. By using an optimal EV charging scheduling proposed, distribution system operators (DSOs) can minimize their operating costs and stably operate the system with a high level of DERs. To validate the method, a modified IEEE 33-bus system with DERs is developed. The case study shows the proposed scheduling strategizes EV charging to reduce the cost of PV curtailment. In the study, the method outperforms the renewable-only case with curtailment by 4.97% in DSO cost. It also demonstrates its potential to increase the renewable hosting capacity by harmonizing EV charging with renewables.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS,POWER TRANSMISSION AND↗

DOE OSTI2022

Allocating Reserves in Active Distribution Systems for Tertiary Frequency Regulation

This paper proposes a cooperative game theory-based approach for reserve optimization to enable distributed energy resources (DERs) participate in tertiary frequency regulation. Tertiary frequency regulation schemes ensure that reserve requirements of primary and secondary frequency regulation are fulfilled with a minimum cost. While the available reserve from a single distribution system may not suffice tertiary frequency regulation, stacked reserve from several distribution systems can enable them participate in tertiary frequency regulation at scale. In this paper, a two-stage strategy is proposed to effectively and precisely allocate spinning reserve requirement from each DER in distribution systems. In the first stage, two types of characteristic functions are computed: worthiness index (WI) and power loss reduction (PLR). In the second stage, the equivalent Shapley values are computed based on the characteristic functions, which are used to determine distribution factors for reserve allocation among DERs. The effectiveness of the proposed method for allocating reserves among DERs is demonstrated through several case studies on modified versions of the IEEE 13-node and 33-node distribution systems.

Gautam, Mukesh↗

DOE OSTI2024

Robust VAR Capability Curve of DER with Uncertain Renewable Generation

Active distribution system with high penetration of inverter based distributed energy resources(DER), can be utilized for var-related ancillary services at the transmission side interface. In order to utilize the DER flexibility, transmission system operator must be presented the aggregated DER flexibility of distribution system. However, the uncertainty in renewable generation, questions the credibility of aggregated capability curve in practice. In this paper, we incorporate the uncertainty into aggregation process to develop capability curve while preserving the real physics (unbalance and lossy nature) of distribution system. The Resulting capability curve with the associated probability can be harnessed by the TSO for decision making for both planning and operation.

Kar, Aditya Shankar↗

DOE OSTI2020

Improving the Performance of Integrated Power-Hardware-in-the-Loop and Quasi-Static Time-Series Simulations

This paper introduces a novel multirate cosimulation architecture that overcomes previous challenges integrating faster real-time, microseconds-scale, power-hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) with larger scale but slower, real-time, seconds-scale, quasi-static time-series (QSTS) simulation. Specifically, an intermediate reduced-equivalent electromagnetic transient (EMT) model duplicates the key power system topology to capture high-speed dynamics and converge hardware-power system interactions between QSTS updates. Exchanging multidimensional parameter vectors (loads, control status, etc.) between the QSTS and EMT models enables capturing the interactions of the rich, high-node-count (thousands of electrical nodes) QSTS model with the hardware. This architecture offers full spatial resolution from QSTS, including individual load dynamics, actual distribution management system controls, and nodal voltages. Simultaneously, the intermediate EMT model provides more detailed high-speed transients of key distributed energy resource hardware interactions. In addition, we use careful PHIL interface design and the exchange of complex power data, rather than current, to further improve performance. This cosimulation architecture is demonstrated by testing a simulated distribution system with an interconnected 500-kVA advanced photovoltaic (PV) inverter in PHIL. In conclusion, the architecture successfully captured PV local volt-volt ampere reactive (volt-VAR) control interactions with the larger network under time-varying electrical and weather conditions.

42 ENGINEERING↗

DOE OSTI2020

dGen™ (Distributed Generation Market Demand Model) [SWR-17-09]

The Distributed Generation Market Demand (dGen™) model is a geospatially rich, bottom-up, market-penetration model that simulates the potential adoption of distributed energy resources (DERs) for residential, commercial, and industrial entities in the continental United States through 2050. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) developed dGen to analyze the key factors that will affect future market demand for distributed solar, wind, storage, and other DER technologies in the United States within a single modeling platform. The dGen model builds on, extends, and provides significant advances over NREL’s SolarDS model (Denholm et al. 2009), which is now deprecated. All Authors and Contributors are alphabetized in the Developers section with Authors of Code listed first, followed by Contributors and do not reflect equal contributions.

Sigrin, Benjamin↗

DOE OSTI2020

dGen™ (Distributed Generation Market Demand Model) [SWR-17-09]

Preus, Robert↗

DOE OSTI2025

Security of DERs and Grid Edge Technologies [Slides]

Distributed energy resources (DERs) offer significant value for incorporating diverse generation technologies and improving reliability. They also present a new set of cybersecurity challenges. The move of generation to the grid edge can also mean more distributed control systems and expanded communication networks, resulting in an increase in attack surface. This presentation will discuss definitions and essential terms related to DERs; developments and deployment trends for DERs; recent cyber attacks on operational technology and industrial systems; cyber risk arising from distributed grid resources; and ways in which standards may help mitigate some of these risks.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2025

Introduction to Microgrids

A microgrid is simply a typical power system that has distributed energy resources (DERs), like small diesel generators, with loads in the network. The resiliency offered by microgrids to retain service during system events makes them a suitable support for the electric grid during natural disasters. One key factor that differentiates microgrids from a typical distribution grid is its ability to disconnect itself in the event of a blackout and sustain its loads through DERs. Microgrid systems will reconnect to the main grid when the grid comes back up. The resiliency offered by microgrids to retain service during system events makes them a suitable support for the electric grid during natural disasters. This presentation discusses the typical key steps involved in microgrid planning, installation, operation in a interoperable and interconnectable fashion.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2023

Decarbonizing all-electric communities via carbon-responsive control of behind-the-meter resources

The progression of electrification in the building and transportation sectors brings new opportunities for energy decarbonization. With higher dependence on the grid power supply, the variation of the grid carbon emission intensity can be utilized to reduce the carbon emissions from the two sectors. Existing coordinated control methods for buildings with distributed energy resources (DERs) either consider electricity price or renewable energy generation as the input signal, or adopt optimization in the decision-making, which is difficult to implement in the real-world environment. This paper aims to propose and validate an easy-to-deploy rule-based carbon responsive control framework that facilitates coordination between all-electric buildings and electric vehicles (EVs). The signals of the grid carbon emission intensity and the local photovoltaics (PV) generation are used for shifting the controllable loads. Extensive simulations were conducted using a model of an all-electric mixed-use community in a cold climate to validate the control performance with metrics such as emissions, energy consumption, peak demand, and EV end-of-day state-of-charge (SOC). Our study identifies that 4.5% to 27.1% of annual emission reduction can be achieved with limited impact on energy costs, peak demand, and thermal comfort. Additionally, up to 32.7% of EV emission reduction can be obtained if the EV owners reduce the target SOC by less than 21.2%.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2023

Evaluation of Distributed Power Apportioning with Net Load Management Engine in Microgrids Using Power Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulation

This article presents the performance evaluation of ratio consensus-based distributed power apportioning engine along with centralized net load management (NLM) engine that ensures viable and stable operation of an islanded microgrid. Managing net load variability in a microgrid with high penetrations of uncertain renewable generation and ever-changing load demands is a crucial need in order to ensure viable and stable operation of the microgrid. Centralized “dispatch-rule”-based and/or multi-agent-based distributed control of distributed energy resources (DERs) in microgrid are well accepted for microgrid by adapting ANSI/ISA-95-based hierarchical control architecture. In the application where microgrid network has large geographical span with multiple DERs dispersed in the network, high penetration of uncertain renewable energy resources, and ever-changing load demands, a judicious selection of techniques/solutions for managing net-load resources for maintaining viability and stability is required. With this motivation, this article proposes a novel solution to mitigate the challenges by incorporating a mixed centralized NLM engine and distributed power apportioning control of DERs and loads. A power-hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) -based experiment is conducted with the centralized NLM engine and the distributed power apportioning engine along with two commercial inverters. The experimental results validates the efficacy of the proposed method in ensuring viability and stability of a microgrid.

hardware-in-the-loop simulation↗

DOE OSTI2019

Seminar 13 - Advanced Methods for Grid Integration of High-Performance Residential Communities

High-performance residential communities such as net-zero energy (NZE) and NZE-ready communities are emerging across the United States as many cities and states have committed to achieve ambitious energy efficiency and renewable energy goals between now and 2050. The achievement of these goals will transform the nation's communities into the holistic paradigms consisting of pervasive solar photovoltaics (PVs) and other renewable distributed energy resources, energy storage and flexible loads. However, integrating residential communities with high PV penetration may bring many challenges to the grid. For example, during many hours of the year, electric power is flowing out of PV-enabled homes and back into the grid. When this happens simultaneously in many nearby homes, distribution feeder voltage can be raised significantly. Intermittent solar power can also cause voltage flickers, leading to potential damages on both distribution feeder and home appliances. Existing solutions, such as PV curtailment, battery storage, and direct load control, are not able to address all the challenges in a cost-effective way. Better understanding is needed on how to deploy rooftop PV, how to predict building loads, and how to coordinate the homes in a community to enhance grid reliability. This seminar consists of four integral presentations that cover different aspects of a solution to these challenges. First, we will present an automated method to identify the best surfaces to deploy PV and size PV according to the PV penetration goals in a community. Second, we will present a streamlined way to create gray-box building models that are suitable for large-scale building-grid co-simulation. Next, we will present a data-driven method to estimate the end-use energy consumption to better coordinate the behind-the-meter resources to reduce utility cost, provide grid services, and improve renewable energy integration. Lastly, we will present a hierarchical control system that integrates the building models and the estimated non-dispatchable loads into the decision-making process to enhance the reliability and resilience of the residential community. Simulation results from an NZE-ready community in Fort Collins, Colorado will be presented in all four presentations and the guidelines on better grid integration of residential communities will be provided.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2019

Large-Scale Grid Models: Synthetic Data and Co-Simulation

Power grid modernization and wide-spread distributed energy resource (DER) integration are driving an explosion of interest in advanced algorithms and new optimization schemes. However, there has historically been a lack of open-access realistically sized and detailed datasets-particularly for the distribution system-and simulation tools able to model these systems. This talk will present recent advances with very large-scale (>>1M nodes) distribution data sets and the use of co-simulation to tractably model large integrated transmission-distribution grids and their interactions with new controls/optimization.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2020

Real-Time Distributed Control of Smart Inverters for Network-level Optimization

The limitations of centralized optimization methods in managing electric power distribution systems operations have led to the distributed paradigm of computing and decision-making. Unfortunately, the existing distributed optimization algorithms are limited in their applicability to managing fast varying phenomena such as those resulting from highly variable Distributed Energy Resource (DER) generation patterns. They require a large number of communication rounds (in the order of 10 2 to 10 3 ) among the computing agents to solve one instance of the optimization problem. Related real-time distributed control methods are equally limited in their applications to power distribution systems with fast-changing DER generation; they require hundreds of rounds of communication and thus are slow in tracking the network-level optimal solutions. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed voltage controller that provides a fast-tracking of rapidly varying DER generation profiles while simultaneously converging to network-level optimal solutions within a few communication rounds. The proposed control algorithm leverages the radial topology of the system, which reduces the required communication rounds to reach the network-level optimum solution by order of magnitude. The novelty lies in carefully reducing the electrical network model from the perspective of each distributed controller and enabling appropriate data sharing among upstream and downstream nodes to achieve fast convergence. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in minimizing the feeder losses while maintaining the node voltage within the pre-specified limits.

voltage control, optimization, reactive power, inv↗

DOE OSTI2025

Grid Resiliency with a 100% Renewable Microgrid

San Diego Gas & Electric Company (SDG&E) installed America’s first and largest utility-scale microgrid in Borrego Springs in 2013. The first generation Borrego Springs Microgrid utilized diesel generators to form and stabilize the microgrid island, with support from grid-scale batteries and local solar photovoltaic (PV) generation. In this project, SDG&E in partnership with National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) demonstrated through modeling, simulation and utility field testing that blackstart and islanding of the microgrid can be led with 100% renewable, inverter based resources (IBRs), to help reduce community reliance on conventional generation resources. Through equipment upgrades, grid-forming island leader capability was transitioned to a battery IBR instead of the Borrego Springs Microgrid diesel generators. A new microgrid controller was integrated to the microgrid and programmed to control and manage multiple energy storage systems. Synchrophasor and other power quality data verified autonomous, high-speed response of the IBRs through blackstart, islanding, and load step testing. Results of project field evaluations provide distribution systems operators (DSO) with increased confidence that renewable, IBR can replace traditional generators to blackstart and island microgrids and rapidly establish stable island frequency with rapid changes in peak power demand. Importantly, the project validated the integration feasibility of a distributed energy resource management system (DERMS) controller that manages multiple grid-forming and grid-following IBRs, establishing a standard design interface to reduce the complexity of integrating new DERs in the future and supporting replication by the industry. As a result of learnings in this project, SDG&E has implemented the microgrid controller strategy at multiple other microgrid sites, thereby validating the replicability of the solution. Hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) simulations including power and controller HIL hardware — along with electromagnetic transient (EMT) simulations of Borrego Springs Microgrid —informed adjustments to inverter parameters and were important to characterize the performance of the IBRs in relevant operating conditions before deployment. The EMT and HIL simulations of islanding the entire community are important contributions in providing confidence in IBR performance prior to future islanding of the community in the field. High-fidelity EMT and/or HIL simulation of IBRs can de-risk field operations, and its relevance and importance as a tool is increasing as distribution grids and microgrids become more complex and dynamic with an increasing proportion of renewable generation, distributed energy storage, and two-way power and energy flows.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2023

REopt: Energy Decision Analysis Overview for Energizing Rural Communities [Slides]

Many factors affect how distributed energy resources may provide cost savings, resilience, and clean energy to your site. REopt allows these factors to be evaluated concurrently.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

DOE OSTI2021

Peer-to-Peer Energy Systems for Connected Communities: A Review of Recent Advances and Emerging Challenges

After a century of relative stability of the electricity industry, extensive deployment of distributed energy resources and recent advances in computation and communication technologies have changed the nature of how we consume, trade, and apply energy. The power system is facing a transition from its traditional hierarchical structure to a more deregulated model by introducing new energy distribution models such as peer-to- peer (P2P) sharing for connected communities. The proven effectiveness of P2P sharing in benefiting both prosumers and the grid has been demonstrated in many studies and pilot projects. However, there is still no extensive implementation of such sharing models in today’s electricity markets. This paper aims to shed some light on this gap through a comprehensive overview of recent advances in the P2P energy system and an insightful discussion of the challenges that need to be addressed in order to establish P2P sharing as a viable energy management option in today’s electricity market. To this end, in this article, we provide some background on different aspects of P2P sharing. Then, we discuss advances in P2P sharing through a systematic domain-based classification. We also review different pilot projects on P2P sharing across the globe. Finally, we identify and discuss a number of challenges that need to be addressed for scaling up P2P sharing in the electricity market followed by concluding remarks at the end of the paper.

Tushar, Wayes↗