Grid

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has partnered with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) to build a power system model repository, which will maintain and develop open-access power grid models and data sets. The DR POWER approach will review, annotate, and verify submitted datasets while establishing a repository and a web portal to distribute open-access models and scenarios.

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), with partner MIT-Comillas-IIT, will develop combined distribution-transmission power grid models. The team will create distribution models using a version of Comillas’ Reference Network Model (RNM) that will be adapted to U.S. utilities and based on real data from a broad range of utility partners. The models will be complemented by the development of customizable scenarios that can be used for accurate algorithm comparisons.

The University of Michigan, with partners from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the California Institute of Technology, and Columbia University, will develop a transmission system data set with greater reliability, size, and scope compared to current models. The project combines existing power systems data with advanced obfuscation techniques to anonymize the data while still creating realistic models. In addition, the project delivers year-long test cases that capture grid network behavior over time, enabling the analysis of optimization algorithms over different time scales.

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), along with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, PJM, Avista, and CAISO, will develop a sustainable data evolution technology (SDET) to create open-access transmission and distribution power grid datasets as well as data creation tools that the grid community can use to create new datasets based on user requirements and changing grid complexity. The SDET approach will derive features and metrics from many private datasets provided by PNNL's industry partners.

GridBright and Utility Integration Solutions (UISOL, a GE Company) will develop a power systems model repository based on state-of-the-art open-source software. The models in this repository will be used to facilitate testing and adoption of new grid optimization and control algorithms. The repository will use field-proven open-source software and will be made publicly available in the first year of the project.

Georgia Tech will generate publicly releasable large-scale, high-fidelity datasets using techniques developed under GRID DATA funding (the team was originally funded as the University of Michigan). These datasets will be based on the RTE transmission system and conform to the technical and mathematical requirements of the Grid Optimization (GO) Competition’s Challenge 2, which focuses on the security-constrained optimal power flow (SCOPF) problem. SCOPF takes preventive and corrective scenarios into account.

AutoGrid, in conjunction with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Columbia University, will design and demonstrate automated control software that helps manage real-time demand for energy across the electric grid. Known as the Demand Response Optimization and Management System - Real-Time (DROMS-RT), the software will enable personalized price signals to be sent to millions of customers in extremely short timeframes—incentivizing them to alter their electricity use in response to grid conditions.

General Atomics is developing a direct current (DC) circuit breaker that could protect the grid from faults 100 times faster than its alternating current (AC) counterparts. Circuit breakers are critical elements in any electrical system. At the grid level, their main function is to isolate parts of the grid where a fault has occurred—such as a downed power line or a transformer explosion—from the rest of the system. DC circuit breakers must interrupt the system during a fault much faster than AC circuit breakers to prevent possible damage to cables, converters and other grid-level components.

Sandia National Laboratories is working with several commercial and university partners to develop software for market management systems (MMSs) that enable greater use of renewable energy sources throughout the grid. MMSs are used to securely and optimally determine which energy resources should be used to service energy demand across the country.

Smart Wire Grid is developing a solution for controlling power flow within the electric grid to better manage unused and overall transmission capacity. The 300,000 miles of high-voltage transmission line in the U.S. today are congested and inefficient, with only around 50% of all transmission capacity utilized at any given time. Increased consumer demand should be met in part with a more efficient and economical power flow.