From The DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory
5.13.24
S Heather Duncan
duncansh@ornl.gov,
478.718.9246
ORNL researchers have teamed up with other national labs to develop a free platform called Open Energy Data Initiative Solar Systems Integration Data and Modeling to better analyze the behavior of electric grids incorporating many solar projects. Credit: Andy Sproles/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in collaboration with three other national labs, have developed a free online platform to help utilities understand how solar energy projects will affect the operation of their power systems. This capability can increase utilities’ confidence in expanding their solar portfolios, protecting reliable delivery of electricity while supporting U.S. efforts to slow climate change.
“This web portal and the unique set of functions it offers to the power systems analysis research and development community will improve electricity grid’s reliability and resiliency while we move to rapidly incorporate as much renewable energy as we can,” said ORNL’s Jin Dong, lead researcher on the project.
The new software platform, called Open Energy Data Initiative Solar Systems Integration Data and Modeling, is unlike data repositories developed previously because it is designed for free use, with any power system datasets, by any user. The online web portal was created in equal partnership with the DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
It allows utilities and other users to develop and insert their own algorithms and data to analyze electric grids that incorporate extensive solar projects. Modeling these networks is more challenging because solar resources are often spread out geographically through a variety of owners. This situation reduces utilities’ access to the information that would enable a more accurate understanding of how the whole system will behave.
“Although renewable technology is available, many utilities are not confident they can manage a system with high renewable penetration,” Dong said. “Using this software platform, they can speed up the adoption process.”
It provides a single public repository for information to support development, testing and validation of power system models for integrating solar energy. Each lab developed a menu of sample algorithms to use with the platform.
The platform includes four major applications:
-Pre-processing data to protect privacy by hiding personal details and combining information from different network technologies into one dataset.
-Developing algorithms to accurately deduce the electrical voltage across the whole network using just a few pieces of information.
-Designing a smart control system for managing solar energy devices to make the power grid more dependable while using as much renewable energy as possible.
-Developing algorithms that recognize changes in electric current, voltage or frequency, identifying signs of abnormal grid behavior that can cause cascading failures.
In addition to the framework and algorithms, ORNL also developed a case study showing how to use the toolkit for detecting and identifying fleeting grid faults, with the help of University of Tennessee-ORNL Governor’s Chair Yilu Liu and her team.
Looking ahead, researchers are exploring the addition of new software capabilities, such as measuring the impact of electric vehicle charging scenarios or new “smart building” technologies. “For example, if my utility district has 80,000 EVs charging overnight, what’s the impact on my system?” Dong said. “We need to establish ways for utilities to adapt their own tools by using these resources, so they can handle this kind of planning themselves.”
Additional ORNL researchers involved in the project include Srikanth Yoginath, Ajay Yadav, Boming Liu and Teja Kuruganti. Platform development is funded by the DOE Solar Energy Technologies Office within of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
See the full article here .
Comments are invited and will be appreciated, especially if the reader finds any errors which I can correct.
five-ways-keep-your-child-safe-school-shootings
Please help promote STEM in your local schools.
Established in 1942, The DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the largest science and energy national laboratory in the Department of Energy system (by size) and third largest by annual budget. It is located in the Roane County section of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Its scientific programs focus on materials, neutron science, energy, high-performance computing, systems biology and national security, sometimes in partnership with the state of Tennessee, universities and other industries.
ORNL has several of the world’s top supercomputers, including Summit, ranked by the TOP500 as Earth’s seventh-most powerful.
The lab is a leading neutron and nuclear power research facility that includes the Spallation Neutron Source and High Flux Isotope Reactor.
It hosts the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, the BioEnergy Science Center, and the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Nuclear Reactors.
ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
Areas of research
ORNL conducts research and development activities that span a wide range of scientific disciplines. Many research areas have a significant overlap with each other; researchers often work in two or more of the fields listed here. The laboratory’s major research areas are described briefly below.
Chemical sciences – ORNL conducts both fundamental and applied research in a number of areas, including catalysis, surface science and interfacial chemistry; molecular transformations and fuel chemistry; heavy element chemistry and radioactive materials characterization; aqueous solution chemistry and geochemistry; mass spectrometry and laser spectroscopy; separations chemistry; materials chemistry including synthesis and characterization of polymers and other soft materials; chemical biosciences; and neutron science.
Electron microscopy – ORNL’s electron microscopy program investigates key issues in condensed matter, materials, chemical and nanosciences.
Nuclear medicine – The laboratory’s nuclear medicine research is focused on the development of improved reactor production and processing methods to provide medical radioisotopes, the development of new radionuclide generator systems, the design and evaluation of new radiopharmaceuticals for applications in nuclear medicine and oncology.
Physics – Physics research at ORNL is focused primarily on studies of the fundamental properties of matter at the atomic, nuclear, and subnuclear levels and the development of experimental devices in support of these studies.
Population – ORNL provides federal, state and international organizations with a gridded population database, called Landscan, for estimating ambient population. LandScan is a raster image, or grid, of population counts, which provides human population estimates every 30 x 30 arc seconds, which translates roughly to population estimates for 1 kilometer square windows or grid cells at the equator, with cell width decreasing at higher latitudes. Though many population datasets exist, LandScan is the best spatial population dataset, which also covers the globe. Updated annually (although data releases are generally one year behind the current year) offers continuous, updated values of population, based on the most recent information. Landscan data are accessible through GIS applications and a USAID public domain application called Population Explorer.
