Power system configuration study and reliability analysis Second quarterly progress report, 7 Oct. 1966 - 6 Jan. 1967
Photovoltaic power system design optimization and procedures for five interplanetary missions
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Photovoltaic power system design optimization and procedures for five interplanetary missions
This slide deck describes typical power systems of large datacenters along with reliability problems to bulk power systems from large-scale integration of datacenters. The slide deck covers the architecture of datacenter power systems, different power electronic converters used inside datacenters, their operation modes, and R&Dopportunities in maintaining grid stability.
System undergoing development uses distributed microprocessors to monitor and control photovoltaic power system. Equipment increases life expectancy and reliability of power system and decreases costs. Adapted to vehicular, residential, and commercial solar and nonsolar power systems. Equipment especially desirable in systems with overall power levels above few kilowatts.
As our power grids transition toward a decarbonized energy mix, ensuring reliability and provision of grid services remains paramount. The power system has always been heavily influenced by the weather - extreme temperatures determine the timing of peak demand, winter cold snaps can limit natural gas supply, gas turbine reliability and output are affected by ambient conditions, and hydro output varies seasonally and annually. However, as the grid increasingly relies on variable renewable energy (VRE), like wind and solar, the attention to reliability and weather conditions is increasingly important. The implications of changing reliability are large. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) rolling blackouts from earlier this year impacted millions of people across the state and could be seen from space (Figure 1).
NASA is pursuing a program in Advanced Subsonic Transport (AST) to develop the technology for a highly reliable Fly-By-Light/Power-By-WIre aircraft. One of the primary objectives of the program is to develop the technology base for confident application of integrated PBW components and systems to transport aircraft to improve operating reliability and efficiency. Technology will be developed so that the present hydraulic and pneumatic systems of the aircraft can be systematically eliminated and replaced by electrical systems. These motor driven actuators would move the aircraft wing surfaces as well as the rudder to provide steering controls for the pilot. Existing aircraft electrical systems are not flight critical and are prone to failure due to Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) (1), ground faults and component failures. In order to successfully implement electromechanical flight control actuation, a Power Management and Distribution (PMAD) System must be designed having a reliability of 1 failure in 10(exp +9) hours, EMI hardening and a fault tolerance architecture to ensure uninterrupted power to all aircraft flight critical systems. The focus of this paper is to analyze, define, and describe technically challenging areas associated with the development of a Power By Wire Aircraft and typical requirements to be established at the box level. The authors will attempt to propose areas of investigation, citing specific military standards and requirements that need to be revised to accommodate the 'More Electric Aircraft Systems'.
This paper contains viewgraph presentation on the "2nd & 3rd Generation Vehicle Subsystems" project. The objective behind this project is to design, develop and test advanced avionics, power systems, power control and distribution components and subsystems for insertion into a highly reliable and low-cost system for a Reusable Launch Vehicles (RLV). The project is divided into two sections: 3rd Generation Vehicle Subsystems and 2nd Generation Vehicle Subsystems. The following topics are discussed under the first section, 3rd Generation Vehicle Subsystems: supporting the NASA RLV program; high-performance guidance & control adaptation for future RLVs; Evolvable Hardware (EHW) for 3rd generation avionics description; Scaleable, Fault-tolerant Intelligent Network or X(trans)ducers (SFINIX); advance electric actuation devices and subsystem technology; hybrid power sources and regeneration technology for electric actuators; and intelligent internal thermal control. Topics discussed in the 2nd Generation Vehicle Subsystems program include: design, development and test of a robust, low-maintenance avionics with no active cooling requirements and autonomous rendezvous and docking systems; design and development of a low maintenance, high reliability, intelligent power systems (fuel cells and battery); and design of a low cost, low maintenance high horsepower actuation systems (actuators).
The electric power system has historically been designed to provide reliable energy to loads by using a relatively small number of well-understood generators. The distinction between load, generation, and transmission resources has been quite clear. Most of the responsibility for planning and operating a system - building a highly reliable network from less reliable parts - has been with the system manager, whether that be a utility, a regional market operator, or some similar entity. Given this historical context, many experts were initially perplexed by the rapidly growing popularity of hybrid resources, which combine multiple technologies into a single entity. Rather than depending on a system operator to provide instructions to individual technologies, hybrid resources intentionally take on more operational responsibility by optimizing and scheduling their combined functions. Interconnection queues in many regions reveal a large and growing interest in hybrids, suggesting that project developers and investors see them as providing advantages.
Reliability analysis of thermal vacuum prototype power conditioning and control system for ion engine
As power systems evolve to become reliant on solar, wind, batteries, and other inverter-based resources (IBRs), it is essential that those resources meet certain minimum performance and capability criteria designed to ensure the power system operates stably and reliably. Because those criteria, as enshrined in interconnection standards, take years to develop and are very long lived, they need to account for not only the present state of the power system but also its expected future state over the lifetime of the power plants to which they will apply. In addition, they need to be specific enough to ensure reliability without over specifying and, thereby, impeding innovation. Because power systems are shifting rapidly from a state where IBRs make up a small to medium portion of generation to one where the generation will, at times, come predominantly from IBRs, interconnection standards are especially challenging to develop today. Good interconnection standards can make the power system more reliable and less costly to operate, whereas poorly designed standards can lead to major problems, like the famous German 50.2-Hz problem, which introduced a risk of losing many gigawatts of solar on a frequency excursion and resulted in many IBRs being retrofitted at great cost to mitigate a major system reliability risk. Readying the power system by specifying forward-looking technical minimum functional capabilities for IBRs can be an effective approach to avoid future retrofits.
The penetration of wind energy has increased significantly in the power grid in recent times. Although wind is abundant, environment-friendly, and cheap, it is variable in nature and does not contribute to system inertia as much as conventional synchronous generators. Coupled with the low inertia contribution, the generation intermittency of wind power leads to reliability and stability issues in the power system. Energy storage systems (ESSs) are among the most prominent alternatives to alleviate these concerns associated with high wind penetration. This paper proposes a planning strategy to size ESS for the reliability and frequency security of wind-rich power grids. A probabilistic methodology for ESS sizing is developed utilizing a composite reliability-based framework with sequential Monte Carlo simulation (MCS). The MCS generates composite reliability indices for the power system, which are employed to obtain the capacity for a reliability energy storage system (RESS). Simultaneously, the MCS-derived probability of synchronization of conventional generators is integrated into an analytical approach for sizing a frequency support energy storage system (FESS). The effect of wind farm dispersion across geographical regions is incorporated in the framework to study possible reductions in the ESS size while maintaining the system reliability and frequency security. Furthermore, the efficacy of the proposed strategy is demonstrated on the RTS-GMLC test system.
There has been a limited amount of peer-reviewed literature on long-term trends in electricity reliability including the underlying factors that impact reliability across the United States. In this analysis, we considered up to 16 years of data from 203 U S. utilities—representing about 70% of electricity sales. Annual frequency of interruptions for an average customer—at the regional and U.S. national-level—has generally decreased over this timeframe. But we do not find that there is a statistically significant trend in the annual duration of interruptions for an average customer. We find that more explicit measures of severe weather are correlated with reliability. We are able to explain 7% and 16% of past variation in the reliability metrics system average interruption duration and frequency indices, respectively, is due to severe weather—a significant improvement over earlier studies. We find that current year spending by utilities is correlated with worse reliability and that cumulative spending over the preceding three years is correlated with better reliability. Finally, we demonstrate that using a statistical instrument to represent the annual frequency of interruptions for an average customer can greatly improve analysis of trends in the annual duration of interruptions for an average customer.
A combinatorial reliability approach is used to identify potential dynamic power conversion systems for space mission applications. A reliability and mass analysis is also performed, specifically for a 100 kWe nuclear Brayton power conversion system with parallel redundancy. Although this study is done for a reactor outlet temperature of 1100K, preliminary system mass estimates are also included for reactor outlet temperatures ranging up to 1500 K.
A combinatorial reliability approach was used to identify potential dynamic power conversion systems for space mission applications. A reliability and mass analysis was also performed, specifically for a 100-kWe nuclear Brayton power conversion system with parallel redundancy. Although this study was done for a reactor outlet temperature of 1100 K, preliminary system mass estimates are also included for reactor outlet temperatures ranging up to 1500 K.
NREL's Power Electronic Grid Interface (PEGI) Workshop, held October 13, 2020, focused on the research challenges of operating power systems with ever-higher levels of inverter-based generation and power-electronic-based load. This presentation discusses the impact of distributed energy resources on bulk system reliability.
Solar activities can cause geomagnetic disturbances (GMDs) that give rise to geomagnetically induced currents (GICs) which may compromise the reliability of the power system. In order to build more reliable models representing GMD interactions with the power grid, the power system’s detailed electrical model must be considered along with fluctuations in the earth’s magnetic and induced surface electric fields. Here, this study investigates the impact of incorporating spatially varying magnetic fields into surface electric field models on GMD risk metrics. A spatially independent magnetic field model and a spatially varying model are compared through simulations. To perform this analysis, the earth’s magnetic field disturbances are transformed into surface electric fields using respective one-dimensional earth conductivity models. Then, the modeling impact of these electric fields is studied using a 2,000-bus grid for Texas and a 25,000-bus grid for the northeast and mid- Atlantic regions of the United States. Simulation results reveal that the inclusion of spatially varying magnetic fields results in considerable differences in GMD risk metrics, highlighting the importance of accounting for spatial variability when assessing GMD risks in the power system.
The electrical utility power system requirements were determined for a Maglev line from San Diego to San Francisco and Sacramento with a maximum capacity of 12,000 passengers an hour in each direction at a speed of 300 miles per hour, or one train every 30 seconds in each direction. Basically the Maglev line requires one 50-MVA substation every 12.5 miles. The need for new power lines to serve these substations and their voltage levels are based not only on equipment loading criteria but also on limitations due to voltage flicker and harmonics created by the Maglev system. The resulting power system requirements and their costs depend mostly on the geographical area, urban or suburban with 'strong' power systems, or mountains and rural areas with 'weak' power systems. A reliability evaluation indicated that emergency power sources, such as a 10-MW battery at each substation, were not justified if sufficient redundancy is provided in the design of the substations and the power lines serving them. With a cost of $5.6 M per mile, the power system requirements, including the 12-kV DC cables and the inverters along the Maglev line, were found to be the second largest cost component of the Maglev system, after the cost of the guideway system ($9.1 M per mile), out of a total cost of $23 M per mile.
As many island power systems seek to integrate high levels of renewable energy, they face new challenges on top of the existing difficulties of operating an isolated grid. With their drastically declining cost, variable renewables, such as wind and photovoltaics (PVs), are increasingly being integrated into island grids to reduce the use of imported fuels. These deployments of renewable energy are dominated by PV and wind generators, which bring unique challenges of their own.
Deep-space missions require onboard electric power systems with reliable design lifetimes of up to 10 yr and beyond. A high-efficiency Stirling radioisotope power system is a likely candidate for future deep-space missions and Mars rover applications. To ensure ample durability, the structurally critical heater head of the Stirling power convertor has undergone extensive computational analyses of operating temperatures (up to 650 C), stresses, and creep resistance of the thin-walled Inconel 718 bill of material. Durability predictions are presented in terms of the probability of survival. A benchmark structural testing program has commenced to support the analyses. This report presents the current status of durability assessments.