Method and System for Managing Power Grid Data
Smart grids promise to improve the efficiency of power grid systems and reduce green house emissions through incorporating power generation from renewable sources and shaping demand to match supply. Power generation from renewable resources such as solar and wind is affected by weather factors that can be highly fluctuating. To ensure these energy sources can be utilized efficiently, smart grid systems must shape demand through incentives to match the supply. As a result, the whole system becomes highly dynamic and requires constant adjustment. How to adjust the system can have a great impact on the efficiency and reliability of power grid systems, which offer many opportunities for innovation. We have designed a scalable data middleware specialized for smart grids.
Making Waves for Marine Energy: Triton from the Water Power Technologies Office Perspective with Samantha Eaves
Samantha Eaves discusses the future of marine energy and her role with Triton from the Department of Energy Water Power Technologies Office perspective.
Federal Buildings
DOE’s Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) works with the federal agencies to ensure the productivity of energy and water are maximized to meet the agencies missions, illustrating good stewardship of taxpayers’ monies. PNNL plays a role in FEMP’s mission by providing the expertise and resources to help the federal sector become more energy and water efficient and resilient. PNNL supports FEMP in multiple fronts, including building optimization, energy and water resilience and security, training, and strategic support. PNNL is a go-to resource that provides technical expertise in building operation and maintenance, facility evaluations, water management, resilience planning, and cybersecurity, among others.
Sustainable Data Evolution Technology (SDET) for Power Grid Optimization - Open Source
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory team is developing a sustainable data evolution technology (SDET) tool to create open-access power grid datasets and facilitate updates to these datasets by the community. The lack of open-access, realistic datasets significantly limits the ability of researchers, developers and ultimately end users to develop, benchmark and compare new methods and tools for optimizing the operation and planning of the grid, which leads to slow adoption by end users. The SDET technology will deliver large-scale realistic datasets and data tooling methods capable of generating new datasets. Along with a separate Data Repository for Power system Open models With Evolving Resources (DR POWER), which aims to deliver a repository that manages datasets through a web portal, we are proposing a complete package for evolvable power grid datasets. The objective is to make this a long lasting effort within and beyond the ARPA-E program so that the datasets can evolve over time and meet the needs for the current and future power grids.
Autonomous Sensor Fish to Support Advanced Hydropower Development
An improved sensor fish with robust design and enhanced measurement capabilities. This sensor fish contains sensors for acceleration, rotation, magnetic field intensity, pressure, and temperature. A low-power microcontroller collects data from the sensors and stores up to 5 minutes of data on a non-volatile flash memory. A rechargeable battery supplies power to the sensor fish. A recovery system helps locating sensor fish. The package, when ready for use is nearly neutrally buoyant and thus mimics the behavior of an actual fish.
Autonomous Sensor Fish to Support Advanced Hydropower Development
An improved sensor fish with robust design and enhanced measurement capabilities. This sensor fish contains sensors for acceleration, rotation, magnetic field intensity, pressure, and temperature. A low-power microcontroller collects data from the sensors and stores up to 5 minutes of data on a non-volatile flash memory. A rechargeable battery supplies power to the sensor fish. A recovery system helps locating sensor fish. The package, when ready for use is nearly neutrally buoyant and thus mimics the behavior of an actual fish.
COORDINATED VOLTAGE CONTROL AND REACTIVE POWER REGULATION BETWEEN TREANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION SYSTEMS (iEdison No. 0685901-18-0021, reporting done by North Carolina State University, 0578204-19-0014)
The invention is a new approach for coordinating volt-var control (VVC) between sub-transmission and distribution systems through optimal reactive power dispatch of distributed energy resources (DERs) that are aggregated as virtual power plants (VPPs). At the sub-transmission level, shunt devices and the reactive power provided by the VPPs are coordinated and optimised using VVC algorithm with weighted sum of multiple objects that include minimising voltage deviations from desirable levels at load buses, minimising loses, minimising solar curtailment, minimising demand response (DR) usage and minimising mechanical switching of shunt elements. The algorithm runs every five minutes and is solved using the AC optimal power flow technique. At the distribution level, each VPP runs a distribution VVC algorithm to dispatch reactive power from DERs. The goal of the VPP reactive power control is to meet sub-transmission service requirements while satisfying all the constraints at distribution side. Each VPP updates its reactive power capability every five minutes to allow the sub-transmission controller to formulate the optimisation problem for the next dispatch interval. The proposed tool is simulated on a Duke Energy Carolina system to demonstrate the capability of providing voltage support by dispatching reactive power of DERs as a VPP.
Transistor-based filter for inhibiting load noise from entering a power supply
A transistor-based filter for inhibiting load noise from entering a power supply is disclosed. The filter includes a first transistor having an emitter coupled to a power supply, a collector coupled to a load, and a base. The filter also includes a first capacitor coupled between the base of the first transistor and a ground terminal The filter further includes an impedance coupled between the base and a node between the collector and the load, or a second transistor and second capacitor. The impedance can be a resistor or an inductor.
CONTROL APPROACH FOR POWER MODULATION OF END-USE LOADS
Proposed a novel control methodology to modulate the aggregated power of a population of heterogeneous end-use loads to follow desired power modulation signals Applied proposed control methodology for end-use loads to provide two different grid services Frequency regulation Damping of inter-area oscillations Technical novelties: Novel signal decomposition method to facilitate load controller design so that heterogeneous end-use loads can provide the service of frequency regulation for the first time (in the literature, only homogeneous end-use loads were considered for frequency regulation) With proposed control approach, it is also for the first time that end-use loads can damp inter-area oscillations for improving grid reliability (in the literature, only transmission-level control was considered)
Method and apparatus for improving water balance in fuel cell power unit
A method and apparatus for improving the water balance in a power unit by providing the exhaust gas from the cathode side of the fuel cell as a feed gas to the combustion system condensing at least a portion of water present in the effluent from the combustion system in a condenser, and then transferring water vapor from the uncondensed portion of the effluent from the condenser to the gas fed to the cathode side of the fuel cell. Water from the exhaust gas from the cathode side of the fuel cell is either captured in the condenser, or is reused in the feed gas of the cathode side of the fuel cell. By humidifying the air fed into system with the water vapor present in the exhaust gas, water is not lost from the system. Instead, the air is being fed into the system is humidified with this water, which in turn allows the humidifier to operated at higher temperatures and/or use smaller radiators and fans and/or draw less parasitic power, thereby increasing overall system efficiency.