The NSF recently awarded a $20M grant to the state of New Mexico based on smart grid research being conducted at New Mexico State University. The grant is part of a program to stimulate competitive research, scientific progress and partnerships with academia alongside public/private interests. It’s exciting to see the initial collaboration taking place between College of Arts and Engineering, and establishing a center for the novel exploration for the future of the smart grid.
Vision for the Future
The DOE predicts a potential 10x increase in distributed energy adoption in the future. With 30%-50% of the generating assets connected at the distribution level (The Future of Microgrids). This could lead to an unmanageable solution for today’s centrally managed model. Large scale aggregation and control frameworks will be needed. Individuals will need to then become more educated, aware and actively involved.
Building management systems (BMS), and Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS), will likely form a communication network within a hierarchy of demand/response and distribution.
Credit, NREL.gov Hierarchical Control Conceptual Diagram
Researchers turned on a SMART model for reference testing, using real hardware to emulate a scenario in the Bay area using 90 DER nodes in the grid which maxed out the simulation capacity. There is a real concern that with thousands or millions of nodes the computational challenges would make central management of the network challenging.
What is a Micro-Grid
Micro-grids are a Path to Sustainable Energy
Investments in digital technologies will continue to move micro-grids forward as they emerge as a sustainable path toward energy consumption. Roughly 2000 micro-grids are operating within the U.S. and another 500 have come online around the world. Of course standardization, testing, protocols and device communications are still central to successful deployments at scale and is a conversation often met with eye-rolling and head-shaking. This tends to be the brick wall that private sector innovation faces, and the challenge of meaningful funding to making an impact for the greater good.
The IEEE however has launched a number of resources and training material to help move this effort forward, which can be found here underneath their section for Grid Modernization Resources
Credits, Sources, Resources
NREL Large Scale Grid Experiments
Why Micro-grids are the future of green energy
Grid Modernization Resources
National Science Foundation, Programs to Stimulate Competitive Research
