Title: Grid Optimization with Solar (GO-Solar)
Funding Opportunity: ENERGISE
SunShot Subprogram: Systems Integration
Location: Golden, CO
Amount Awarded: $1,591,603
Awardee Cost Share: $408,397
This project develops a novel control scheme that provides system-wide monitoring and control using a small fraction of the active devices on the grid. This technology aims to be scalable to more than one million nodes through large-scale integrated transmission-distribution systems, which will be simulated using NREL’s Integrated Grid Modeling System with actual system data. The platform gives utilities the capability to seamlessly dispatch legacy devices and distributed energy resources to achieve system-wide performance and reliability targets.
Approach
The research team will collect detailed transmission and distribution system electrical models for a utility jurisdiction transmission system and a subset of the distribution system. That information will be used to develop and test the core technologies for the control scheme and its algorithms. Testing will be performed at NREL’s Energy Systems Integration Facility to assess the tool’s performance using real feeder model data, commercial devices at power, and utility energy management system data.
Innovation
The key innovation of this project's approach is to proactively manage very large distributed energy resource populations using only a few measurement points for input through predictive state estimation and a few carefully selected control nodes identified and dispatched through online multi-objective optimization.