Engineering Commons^™

Developing An Energy Service Interface Specification, Jaime T. Kolln

Dissertations and Theses

Developing an Energy Service Interface (ESI) specification requires engaging a community of stakeholders including grid operators, Information and Communication Technology implementors, integrators, and finally standards bodies who will define an interface that respects and boundaries of ownership and roles of responsibility in order to activate millions of Distributed Energy Resources for the provision of grid services. By applying Interoperability Maturity Model Criteria and ESI principles to common grid-DER service use cases, the Grid Modernization Lab Consortium team will engage subject matter experts to develop a specification, with an eventual goal of informing development of ESI compliant profiles or standards. The …

Power Distribution System Tools For Analyzing Impacts Of Projected Electric Vehicle Load Growth Using Gridlab-D, Shahad Alomani

Dissertations and Theses

The increased penetration of Electric Vehicle (EV) will provide substantial benefits to the environment. However, each EV will present a significant additional load to electric power distribution infrastructure, especially to radial distribution feeders. The additional load may cause transformers to operate beyond their thermal limits, unacceptable voltage drops along distribution lines, and primary conductor overloads. It is now, more than ever, vital to understand the limitations of existing infrastructure in light of an accelerating push for greener alternatives with insight that stems from modeling, simulation, and proper analysis as the backbone to a well-informed response.

The objective of this work …

Technology Planning For Aligning Emerging Business Models And Regulatory Structures: The Case Of Electric Vehicle Charging And The Smart Grid, Kelly R. Cowan

Dissertations and Theses

Smart grid has been described as the Energy Internet: Where Energy Technology meets Information Technology. The incorporation of such technology into vast existing utility infrastructures offers many advantages, including possibilities for new smart appliances, energy management systems, better integration of renewable energy, value added services, and new business models, both for supply- and demand-side management. Smart grid also replaces aging utility technologies that are becoming increasingly unreliable, as the average ages for many critical components in utility systems now exceed their original design lives. However, while smart grid offers the promise of revolutionizing utility delivery systems, many questions remain about …

Configuring The Urban Smart Grid: Transitions, Experimentation, And Governance, Anthony Michael Levenda

Dissertations and Theses

In the face of challenges of energy security, decarbonization, resilience, and the replacement of aging infrastructure systems, federal, state, and local actors are facilitating the development of smart electricity networks to transition towards a more sustainable electricity system. In the United States, development of "smart grids" is being pursued as a national policy mandate and goal, promising that the deployment of smart grid technologies -- referring in general to digital information and communication technologies that sense, monitor, control and manage the electric grid -- will make electricity systems more environmentally sustainable and reliable, and at the same time, provide opportunities …

A Utility-Scale Deployment Project Of Behind-The-Meter Energy Storage For Use In Ancillary Services, Energy Resiliency, Grid Infrastructure Investment Deferment, And Demand-Response Integration, Joseph Nathanael Wilson

Dissertations and Theses

Electric utilities are increasingly incentivized to integrate new renewable energy generation resources to their systems; however, operations-related issues arise due to the non-dispatchable and stochastic nature of these renewable energy sources. These characteristics lead to a variety of issues for utilities, among which are voltage fluctuations, balancing dispatch against ramping events, short-duration power fluctuations, and the need to invest in peaking generation facilities just to accommodate the renewable energy. A traditional solution to these issues is to employ renewable generation-following techniques using either newly constructed gas peaking plants, or by shifting existing generation resources to this following responsibility. Unfortunately, use …