An innovative project developed at the University of Vermont has received a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) for research aimed at making the electric grid better able to accommodate power generated from renewable energy sources. The grant, one of only 12 awarded nationally, is part of ARPA-E’s newest program, called Network Optimized Distributed Energy Systems, or NODES. The title of the project is “Packetized energy management: coordinating transmission and distribution.”
Principal investigator Mads Almassalkhi, an electrical engineering (EE) faculty member in UVM’s College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, is partnering with EE colleagues Paul Hines and Jeff Frolik at UVM and professor Sumit Paudyal at Michigan Technological University to develop the technology, and an accompanying strategy, that will help the grid absorb a much larger contribution from renewable sources.
“We are very excited to lead this ARPA-E effort and to work with our local partners GMP and VELCO,” said Almassalkhi. “With increased renewable generation, we need to re-think how we supply and regulate energy in the 21st century and leverage existing energy resources to create a truly responsive grid.”
The University of Vermont proposes to develop and validate a new approach to demand-side management called packetized energy management (PEM). The PEM model builds on the technology used to manage data packets in communication networks without centralized control and with a high level of privacy. The PEM system will allow millions of small end-use devices to cooperatively balance energy supply and demand in real time without jeopardizing the reliability of the grid or the comfort of the consumers. The project will build on the PEM method to optimally manage the rapid fluctuations that can come with large amounts of renewable power production, while simultaneously managing reliability constraints in the bulk transmission and local distribution infrastructure. To ensure the developed methods are effective, the proposed integrated system will be extensively validated using simulation, large-scale hardware implementation, as well as an industry-scale micro-grid environment.
An Industrial Advisory Board of transmission and distribution system operators, as well as established and startup technology companies and regulatory authorities, will help ensure that the project delivers commercially viable solutions.
The 12 NODES project teams will develop technologies that coordinate load and generation on the grid to create a virtual energy storage system. The teams will develop innovative hardware and software solutions to integrate and coordinate generation, transmission and end-use energy systems at various points on the electric grid. These control systems will enable real-time coordination between distributed generation, such as rooftop and community solar assets and bulk power generation, while proactively shaping electric load. This will alleviate periods of costly peak demand, reduce wasted energy and increase renewables penetration on the grid.
Other grantees include the University of California at San Diego, Arizona State University, Stanford University, General Electric Global Research, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Pacific Northwest Laboratory, Regents of the University of Minnesota, Northwestern University, DNV GL, National Rural Electric Cooperative Association and Eaton Corporation.