WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2015 - The electric grid must balance power supply and demand nearly in real-time, requiring power plants to be adjusted on a second-by-second basis. This balancing is made increasingly more complex by renewable energy technologies, such as wind and solar, which add more uncertainty and variability.
A team of researchers led by the Department of Energy's (DOE) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is proposing a unique solution to this growing problem: Employ the millions of distributed energy resources that already exist, such as solar panels on rooftops and heating and cooling systems in buildings, to balance the power grid, increase reliability and decrease carbon emissions.
The incentive-based coordination and control system for distributed energy resources is expected to make the grid more efficient, sustainable and resilient. “Our new approach… offers a great deal of flexibility and the potential to increase system reliability,” says PNNL engineer Karan Kalsi. “It would give the future power grid the ability to quickly take on and shed power, which would also enable us to incorporate more intermittent renewable energy into the nation's power mix.”
The new method involves asking companies, citizens and others to voluntarily enroll distributed resources, like batteries, smart appliances, electric cars, solar panels and heating and cooling systems. Owners of participating resources will be offered incentives, which could include a contract or a payment or coupon, to encourage them to enroll their devices.
To test the system, more than 100 actual distributed energy devices, including heating and cooling systems at commercial and residential buildings, inverters for utility-owned solar panels and residential water heaters, will be managed with the new system. To evaluate the system on a larger scale, more than 100,000 simulated devices will also be managed through several grid modeling tools that PNNL is combining for the project.
A new organization called a distribution reliability coordinator will then evaluate the flexibility of various distributed resources to simultaneously provide the following three grid services:
A new organization called a distribution reliability coordinator will then evaluate the flexibility of various distributed resources to simultaneously provide the following three grid services:
- Frequency response — very fast-acting (within milliseconds) emergency response to major events, such as a power plant failure.
- Regulation — responding within seconds to maintain balance between power supply and demand.
- Ramping — buffering rapid changes in power demand.
The $4 million project was one of 12 new projects announced recently by DOE's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). ARPA-E awarded the project a total of about $2.7 million, approximately $1.4 million of which will go to PNNL. An additional $1.3 million of the project’s expenses will be covered by cost sharing from project partners.
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