Engineering Commons^™

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 …

Aggregation Of Electric Water Heaters For Peak Shifting And Frequency Response Services, Thomas Leighton Clarke

Dissertations and Theses

The increased penetration of renewable energy sources poses new challenges for grid stability. The stochastic and uncontrollable generation of solar and wind power cannot be adjusted to match the load profile, and the transition away from traditional synchronous generators is reducing the grid capacity to arrest and recover from frequency disturbances.

Additionally, the distributed nature of many renewable energy sources makes centralized control of generation more complicated. The traditional power system paradigm balances the supply and demand of electricity on the grid by regulating generation. As this becomes more difficult, one alternative is to adjust the load instead. This is …

Spectral Clustering For Electrical Phase Identification Using Advanced Metering Infrastructure Voltage Time Series, Logan Blakely

Dissertations and Theses

The increasing demand for and prevalence of distributed energy resources (DER) such as solar power, electric vehicles, and energy storage, present a unique set of challenges for integration into a legacy power grid, and accurate models of the low-voltage distribution systems are critical for accurate simulations of DER. Accurate labeling of the phase connections for each customer in a utility model is one area of grid topology that is known to have errors and has implications for the safety, efficiency, and hosting capacity of a distribution system. This research presents a methodology for the phase identification of customers solely using …

Adoption Of An Internet Of Things Framework For Distributed Energy Resource Coordination And Control, Tylor Slay

Dissertations and Theses

Increasing penetration of non-dispatchable renewable energy resources and greater peak power demand present growing challenges to Bulk Power System (BPS) reliability and resilience. This research investigates the use of an Internet of Things (IoT) framework for large scale Distributed Energy Resource (DER) aggregation and control to reduce energy imbalance caused by stochastic renewable generation. The aggregator developed for this research is Distributed Energy Resource Aggregation System (DERAS). DERAS comprises two AllJoyn applications written in C++. The first application is the Energy Management System (EMS), which aggregates, emulates, and controls connected DERs. The second application is the Distributed Management System (DMS), …

Electric Water Heater Modeling For Distributed Energy Resource Aggregation And Control, Anne E. Clarke

Dissertations and Theses

Today's utilities face new challenges due to the continually increasing penetration of residential solar and other distributed, stochastic generation sources. In order to maintain balance and stability in the grid without building costly, large-scale generation plants, utilities are turning to distributed energy resources for use in demand response programs. Demand response is a cost-efficient way to balance grid load/generation without the need for increased capital investment in traditional generation resources. Demand response programs are excellent exploiters of end-user devices that otherwise further accentuate the daily load curve and thus, add to the difficulties created by daily load peaks.

Electric water …

Determining The Power And Energy Capacity Of A Battery Energy Storage System Utilizing A Smoothing Feeder Profile To Accommodate High Photovoltaic Penetration On A Distribution Feeder, Osama Mohammed Abbas Aly Mansour

Dissertations and Theses

Electricity is a perishable commodity; once it is generated it needs to be consumed or stored. Electric energy storage provides both power and energy capacity. Power capacity applications reduce the need for generation, while energy capacity allows for energy consumption to be decoupled from generation. Previous research was done to develop an algorithm for determining the power (MW) and energy (MWh) capacities of a battery energy storage system (BESS) to mitigate the adverse impacts of high levels of photovoltaic (PV) generation. The algorithm used a flat feeder profile, and its performance was demonstrated on the equinoxes and solstices.

Managing feeder …

Evaluating The Level Of Harmonic Distortion In A Typical Distribution Feeder, Wessen S. Bogale

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Steady-state analysis of electrical power systems is largely based on linear and sinusoidal AC circuits which allow the concept of impedance, phasors and well-defined power quantities (i.e., real, reactive and apparent powers). In reality, however, the electric load which was once composed of linear elements (e.g., induction motors, incandescent lighting, etc …) is becoming more and more nonlinear due to the wide-spread use of electronic components such as fluorescent lighting and variable-frequency drives that power the majority of electric motors. As a consequence, the current drawn by such devices is often distorted, thus containing a number of high frequency harmonics …

Hardware Implementation Of An Automatic Adaptive Centralized Under Frequency Load Shedding, Sarra Abd Elwahid

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Due to the shortcomings of the conventional Under Frequency Load Shedding UFLS, most researches develop an adaptive UFLS schemes. With the aid of new technology hardware that enables the implementation of Wide Area Monitoring Protection and Control (WAMPC) application, this gives the opportunity for using industrial grade hardware to implement, evaluate these schemes and, therefore, to validate the recent research findings for industrial use. This study implements a centralized adaptive UFLS algorithm using industry grade hardware such as Phasor Measurement Units (PMUs), Synchrophasor Vector Processor (SVP) that resembles real time system operation. The study examines disturbance effects on the frequency …

Analysis Of Two-Stage Shunt Capacitor Bank Protection Deficiencies With Mitigation Suggested, Russell William Patterson

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

A large utility was experiencing a problem when switching a two-stage capacitor bank resulting in misoperations of the bank protection. When the bypass switch is opened a long duration dc offset occurs across all capacitors. This dc causes saturation of the tap point VT resulting in a false differential voltage and misoperation of the protection. The utility had to disable the voltage differential during switching until the phenomenon could be studied and a suitable solution found. The work is a comprehensive analysis of the transients affecting the protection and how the problem could be mitigated. An analytical approach was taken …

Impact Of Plug In Electric Vehicle Battery Charging On A Distribution System, Sharmila Kumari Bunga

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEV) battery chargers are mostly connected to the low-voltage grid for charging, hence their increased penetration coupled with uncoordinated charging could impact the distribution system in terms of voltage unbalance and transformer overloading. Although PEV battery charging is increasing, impact on the distribution system is not fully understood. This study focuses on voltage unbalance caused by uneven distribution of PEV penetration among the phases. Using real data provided by utility, a distribution system has been modeled and tested using MATLAB-SIMULINK. PEV penetration level at 10-80% is studied, voltage unbalance is calculated and transformer overloading is analyzed. In …

Fast Bus Protection Using Iec 61850, Cassandra Ha Goff

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) 61850 is the latest technology that allows electric power utilities to build low cost digital substations. Because limited objective information is available, electric power utilities desire independent evaluations of IEC 61850 from end users. The objective of this study was to compare the IEC 61850 method to the hardwired method to find an optimal solution for the fast bus protection scheme. System disturbance clearing time, engineering and construction costs, and interoperability between multivendor microprocessor-based relays were used as the criteria for the evaluation. This research measured the protection speed of the hardwired method and the IEC …

Reliability Assessment Of Smart Distribution System And Analysis Of Automatic Line Switches, Sudip Manandhar

Masters Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Electric Power reliability is a major concern of any utility company. Although the distribution system is getting advanced, reliable energy at a cheaper cost is still a big concern. Power utility companies are trying to provide reliable energy through many possible ways. One of the possible solutions is use of automatic switches. Power utility companies are using automatic switch called IntelliRupter® for automatic fault detection, isolation and service restoration. It has been the biggest achievement in improving reliability so far. However, such automation is very costly. It needs proper planning for installation of such devices so that the utility company …

Evaluation Of Highly Efficient Distribution Transformer Design And Energy Standards Based On Load, James Sanguinetti

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Power distribution transformers have been prevalent in commercial building distribution systems since the inception of modern commercial electricity. Yet as more and more manufactures seek to improve transformer efficiencies by making changes to the design of the transformer itself, a fundamental concept may be overlooked - the impact transformer demand sizing has on power losses. When modern transformers are improperly sized for the application they will be installed for they are not being utilized at their optimum design loading range, which may impact operating efficiency.

This thesis will aim to test and evaluate modern day transformer design coupled with currently …

Buffering Pv Output During Cloud Transients With Energy Storage, Yacouba Moumouni

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

Consideration of the use of the major types of energy storage is attempted in this thesis in order to mitigate the effects of power output transients associated with grid-tied CPV systems due to fast-moving cloud coverage. The approach presented here is to buffer intermittency of CPV output power with an energy storage device (used batteries) purchased cheaply from EV owners or battery leasers. When the CPV is connected to the grid with the proper energy storage, the main goal is to smooth out the intermittent solar power and fluctuant load of the grid with a convenient control strategy. This thesis …