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Page added on June 19, 2014
DOE Searches for Breakthroughs in Grid-Edge Energy Integration
Greentech Media’s Grid Edge Live 2014 conference is just around the corner, and that means we’re on the lookout for news on the distributed, intelligent energy integration front. Here’s a new Department of Energy project that fits the bill, right down to the acronym — and winning proposals will have a crack at the world’s most advanced real-world grid testing facility to prove their approach.
DOE’s Integrated Network Testbed for Energy Grid Research and Technology Experimentation, or INTEGRATE, proposal is targeting more than $6.5 million in matching grants. Would-be partners have until next week to submit proposals that lay out the feasibility and cost of delivering their solution to the renewable-grid integration puzzle.
The overarching goal is to “enable clean energy technologies to increase the hosting capacity of the grid by providing grid services in a holistic manner using an open source, interoperable platform,” according to the RFP. That’s a pretty grand set of imperatives, and DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has helpfully broken it up into three key “topic” areas: Connected Devices and Communication and Control Systems, each with a maximum $1.5 million in grants available, and Integrated Systems, which has up to $6.5 million available.
NREL will make its new Energy Systems Integration Facility in Golden, Colorado available to test technologies from winning proposals. ESIF, opened in 2012, is a state-of-the-art test bed for low- and medium-voltage grid technologies, complete with a real set of grid gear connected to solar, wind and on-site generation resources.
Here’s the checklist NREL has set for winning projects over the next eighteen months:
- Characterize the system-level challenges associated with clean energy technologies when integrated into the grid at scale;
- Utilize an open-sourced, standards-based interoperable platform that will allow communication and control of clean energy technologies both individually and holistically; and
- Develop and demonstrate high-value grid services that clean energy technologies can provide holistically at a variety of scales (e.g., building, distribution, transmission).
On the connected devices front, NREL is considering a wide array of grid edge systems, including solar PV systems, electric vehicles, smart buildings, fuel cell technologies, and wind turbines. Each of these systems has key characteristics, such as how quickly it can be called upon and how much flexibility it has, that NREL wants to model for their ability to “provide grid services that help to maintain operational stability.”
The communications and control systems category is seeking proposals to “design, build, and test a flexible, open-source consensus standards based CIC [communications, information and computation] infrastructure that allows for the interoperability of multiple clean technology devices in a secure fashion.”
The integration systems portion, which carries the largest amount of funding, also carries the most challenging set of goals: to “investigate and demonstrate how clean energy technologies can work together holistically to provide grid services and increase the hosting capacity of these technologies on the grid.”
This section is further broken down into two customer-facing applications: smart home systems and those that tie buildings into campus microgrid systems, and one centered on a distribution grid feeder. And, as the RFP highlights, “priority will be given to applicants that will demonstrate these approaches in real-world applications,” to be tested at ESIF.
These concepts align with some of the open-standards-based grid integration work we’ve been covering, such as Duke Energy’s “coalition of the willing,” or Toronto Hydro’s distributed microgrid work. Silver Spring Network’s new SilverLink Sensor Network platform, Cisco’s new IOx platform, and Itron’s embedded sensing platform, are attempts by smart grid players to establish their own technology platform for tying multiple field devices together.
As for the integration systems, we’ve seen efforts underway to design “transactive energy” schemas that allow lots of grid edge devices — and aggregations of these devices in microgrid or virtual power plant form — to share data in ways that allow them to reinforce and trade capabilities with one another. Startups like Gridquant and GRIDiant, recently acquired by Landis+Gyr, have their own approaches to system-wide integration, and research efforts out of the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E program are also targeting this challenge.
7 Comments on "DOE Searches for Breakthroughs in Grid-Edge Energy Integration"
rockman on Thu, 19th Jun 2014 12:18 pm
A bit far from my background so I’ll make a risky statement: Texas has modified its grid to allow wind to become a significant source of power which continues to grow yearly. Much I don’t know about modifying grids but one key aspect seems to be just get out there and do what you already know how to do. Despite some local opinions I doubt Texans are that much smarter then everyone else.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Thu, 19th Jun 2014 1:50 pm
Unfortunately we are missing the opportunity to simplify the grid, decentralized AltE power to the end user, and overbuild key performance nodes in the grid. We should avoid too many large, expensive, and complicated AltE production platforms that could be shut out of the grid if the grid destabilizes and requires simplicity to function. It is not economical in today’s industrial, financial, and with accepted practices in the power industry for the simple end user approach. There is some happening but the vast amount of dollars are going into the grandiose projects. This power industry is more and more run by psychopathic Wall Street “maggots feeding off their host (consumer). Wall “Streeters” are concerned with profit not what is in society’s interest. Variable, intermittent, and dispersed end user AltE power requires lifestyle changes that require attitude changes. We need cheap, low power, simple, low maintenance, robust products to keep the lights on and do simple jobs. It is much easier today just to try to increase complexity by throwing money at it. Feeling technical and modern instead of reliable and tried, true, and tested. My readings suggest there is a limit to intermittent and variable power production integration into the grid. The issue also relates to storage and efficiency loss. You can approach this issue from different angles but the same result pops up and that is variable and intermittent power production is more expensive than mainline power in aggregate. I don’t care if the price of many AltE production is coming down in relation to FF’s. There is more to power production than the production of power there is the all-important distribution, maintenance, and financing. If we don’t watch it we are going to find ourselves with an unstable grid at a time we are also having a liquid fuel crisis. Wouldn’t that be fun!
Northwest Resident on Thu, 19th Jun 2014 2:07 pm
“…we are going to find ourselves with an unstable grid at a time we are also having a liquid fuel crisis.”
With our without AltE, we can pretty much count on it. In America, at least. Our grids are already in a state of disrepair, many areas bordering on breakdown already with spare parts and manpower/materials needed for maintenance barely holding the line. The sad fact is that the majority of our grid system was built at a time when everybody thought we would have all the oil we ever wanted with no end to the bountiful and cheap supply — ever. In just a couple of decades, we have seen that unwarranted optimism shrivel on the vine. Now, the reality is the same as with everything else that humans built during the brief period of cheap and plentiful oil — those systems are unsustainable. They were all doomed from the very beginning, it just took a while to figure it out. The chickens are coming home to roost — or, perhaps a more pertinent cliché — the wolves are closing in.
My guess is that in the not too distant future, the national grid is going to shrink substantially. All those hundreds of thousands of homes out in the country and in the middle of nowhere are probably going to have their electrical and water/sewage systems cut off, as the post-collapse working crews use outlying grids as spare parts depots, cannibalizing parts and wire and pipe as needed to keep the main hubs going.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Thu, 19th Jun 2014 2:25 pm
We are on the same page NR especially pertinent is your last paragraph. OK, back to my hay field.
Norm on Thu, 19th Jun 2014 8:17 pm
brilliant computer nerds will power your kilowatt toaster thru a CAT 5 Ethernet wire. LOL Government research welfare bums, while the fossil fuel runs out.
Makati1 on Thu, 19th Jun 2014 9:23 pm
All of the US utility systems are approaching their pull date. Some in the cities are over 100 years old and are nothing but patches over patches. There is nowhere near the money to begin to repair them or rebuild them to modern needs/standards. Although the trillions spent on unnecessary power wars over the last 15 years would have gone a long way towards a real fix.
No, eventual collapse is their future. As mentioned above, they will contract as they fail on the fringes until the center finally fails. Game over. No number of “conferences” are going to make a difference.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Fri, 20th Jun 2014 5:40 am
Mak, please, you are back at your morning crowing like the roosters around here. The US is a big country and the utility situation is a mixed bag. The cooperative utilities around here are in excellent shape. They even return a capital budget refund. Many areas especially those that were recently developed are in great shape with the most modern up to date equipment. Yea, Makster, go to Detroit to see some decay. I tire of your unfair and selfishly motivated attacks on the US. Why don’t you talk about your Nirvana in the Philippians?