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UQM Technologies to Develop Advanced Grid-Connect Interface for the California Energy Commission and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
5 November 2007
UQM Technologies has received a $1,046,500 cost-share contract from the California Energy Commission’s Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) Program and the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to develop an advanced grid-connect inverter under the Advanced Power Electronics Interface (APEI) Initiative.
UQM’s cost share on the program will be $439,000 or 42%. The development effort will span a two year period.
The APEI is one of a much larger set of initiatives focused on integrating distributed energy resources (DER) into the power system and markets.
The Precourt Institute for Energy Efficiency (PIEE) at Stanford defines distributed energy resources (DER) as relatively small systems (1 kW to about 60 MW) located on the customer’s side of the meter or within the distribution portion of the utility’s generation, transmission and distribution (T&D) system.
Strategically located DER can help to reduce the customers demand for power and energy, provide grid support, and deliver power directly onto the grid. DER includes distributed generation (DG), demand-side management (DSM), energy storage (ES) and, potentially, vehicle-to-grid (V2G) systems.
The goal of the APEI initiative is to develop power electronics technology that improves and accelerates the use of DER systems by enabling cost reductions trough the development of standardized, high-production volume, modules.
UQM will focus on designing a cost-effective, flexible, readily-manufactured, ready to be commercialized prototype interface to standardize the interconnection for a range of APEI systems.
This modular and scalable approach is intended to reduce manufacturing cost and complexity while having sufficient flexibility to connect many types of distributed energy systems to the electric power grid and accommodate fluctuations in grid voltages.
UQM will collaborate with the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Colorado School of Mines on system modeling and certain aspects of the design effort.
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November 5, 2007 in Power Generation, V2G | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack (0)
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Comments
Early wide acceptance standards would avoid duplication and reduce on-going cost to customers.
Should it be an international effort?
Posted by: Harvey D | Nov 5, 2007 9:37:35 AM
This is a welcome move toward a "new" grid system designed to utilize DER rather than build more power generation stations. Not that DER will meet the future demand for grid power but that we begin to construct a model for residential/community energy producing resources.
An amazing stat is the current non-grid connected DER generating capacity of some 250GW in the US - approx 25% US total grid capacity. 80% of this capacity exists as standby reciprocating engine generators (not environmentally friendly.) BUT as PIEE suggests: "If all of the standby power were grid connected, it could earn customer revenues, and could be called upon to support the grid when necessary, the energy-security implications could be great."
These customer side interconnect devices, along with a conscientious approach to replacing old DER with newer technology PV, microturbines, wind turbines and fuel cells - could move us closer to a next generation grid able to handle new demands without resorting to fossil or nuclear powered stations.
The PIEE study is very informative:
http://piee.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/htm/research_distributed.php
Posted by: gr | Nov 5, 2007 11:56:37 AM
This looks like a solution w/o a problem. The Buzz Word Density is near infinity.
Solar homes in my neighborhood already feed power into the grid. Inverters, etc. exist. Granted the voltages will be different from a vehicles batteries.
V2G is years away, the vehicles don't exist and the batteries don't exist in meaningful numbers.
Does a grand scheme for standardization bring anything to the table now?
Posted by: K | Nov 5, 2007 12:25:26 PM
The problem is monopolization of the grid system by centralized utilities. A security disaster.
Posted by: sulleny | Nov 5, 2007 7:44:59 PM
This looks like a solution w/o a problem. The Buzz Word Density is near infinity.Kit P, is that you?
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Nov 5, 2007 8:30:41 PM
E-P: No K is not Kit P.
Unlike others here I tend to look at things more from the money and development cycle viewpoints. Maybe I was in a mean mood but this stuck me as much Buzz and little Beef. But who pays attention to a few million these days?
I strongly suspect that standards and explicit designs for volume manufacturing are not needed yet.
There are many different schemes and trials going on: some by utilities, some by advanced battery almost-ares and want-a-bes, some with control makers such as Johnson and automakers, and most with a combination of universities or national labs and utilities and companies.
DER may be the future. But it isn't certain. And I have great faith in electrical engineering to quickly design and build the needed interfaces as the economics and concepts are proved.
I don't understand sulleny's comment. The present grid gets often by storms, floods, and an occasional serious outage. Power is restored and life continues. Sometimes utilities bring in large portable generators to tide over badly hit areas. I don't see DER would change that much. But perhaps sulleny will clarify the matter.
Posted by: K | Nov 5, 2007 9:59:01 PM
One of the problems that I can see is just in security but I can´t name it as a disaster. All the protections in a standard grid are designed to act "down stream", in a distributed generation grid power comes from both sides of a fuse or a switch and there are extra difficulties in isolating an area.
Fusion reactors may be the future, but until we have them DER is the near future.
Posted by: Mario | Nov 6, 2007 5:13:43 AM
The security issue is most likely the vulnerability of single source power generation. Having lived through a three day blackout in the US northeast (New York, Ohio, Penn) only three years ago - it is apparent the present grid is wanting.
If as PIEE points out some of the non-connected 250GW of standby power was connected - it might have shortened the outage. If you have been through a greater than 24hour outage you will know that life does not go on without significant losses for millions of people. My neighborhood food vendors suffered entire inventory loss due to lack of refrigeration (even with standby).
DER built out with modern resources (PV, microturbine, fuel cell, wind) would de-centralize the present grid - allowing less opportunity for cascading failure as the northeast blackout apparently suffered. It would offer the same leveling, shaving and buffering capacity speculated by V2G enthusiasts and it would offer small business opportunities.
The conversion of older DER to these new technologies is IMO a far safer direction than building out more fossil, fission or !fusion plants.
Posted by: gr | Nov 6, 2007 10:06:44 AM
Improved grid technology would certainly help. I've read that the loop of transmission lines from Michigan to New York and back through Canada to Windsor has roughly a gigawatt of circulating power due to the phase relationships between the various parts. This power goes around in circles, adding to losses but doing no work. This circulating power could be eliminated, and the wasted carrying capacity recovered, by converting just one link in the system to HVDC. (IMHO, switching the Michigan-Ontario connections as part of an HVDC system for transmission of power from wind farms on Lake Huron would be an excellent idea; there is some Class 5 wind territory on those waters.)
However, I don't think DER is a panacea in this case. The big problem in the August 2003 blackout wasn't the outage, it was the fact that the cascading failures forced plants offline and physically damaged some of them (e.g. sudden dumps of high-pressure steam directly to condensers to avoid turbine overspeed). Unless the DER system could react fast enough to prevent this sort of progressive failure, it would only be able to help pick up the pieces.
What would have helped is a lot of V2G systems. One of the characteristics of a sudden grid problem is that zones which lose power have the grid frequency fall (phase is retarded), while parts which have surplus power have the grid frequency rise (phase is advanced). This can be sensed by vehicles, and reaction can be in a couple of cycles. If all the vehicles in NE Ohio had gone from charging to zero power or even feeding the grid briefly to try to hold the phase constant, the grid operators would have had time to shed load and keep the next domino from falling.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Nov 6, 2007 2:51:25 PM
EP, good comments. I think we both agree that some form of non-standard grid resource would have relived some of the overload during the NE blackout. If we were to pursue a policy of DER conversion and grid connection along with integrated V2G over a twenty year maturation period - we could end up with a far more fault tolerant grid.
With regard to the phase advance-retard problem - I suspect that if the V2G system can relieve the problem, then DER systems converted to Li-Ion, or (?)supercap storage can be engineered to arrive online with the same efficacy as V2G.
Posted by: gr | Nov 6, 2007 7:21:12 PM
Most of today's DER resources are engine-driven alternators. They're not going to be able to start fast enough to compete with a line-synchronous system like an AC Propulsion reductive charger/inverter. Rather than try to add hundreds of megawatts of fast-reacting stationary capacity without any obvious day-to-day benefit, it makes sense to push PHEV with V2G as fast as we can - kill two birds with one stone.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | Nov 6, 2007 8:16:01 PM
A few (25-50) million people with V2G PHEVs could certainly contribute to higher grid safety, stability, availability, performance and increased revenues/profits.
That being said, those people should receive proper compensation thru lower tarif, proportional to the KWh of energy + peak power Kw put at the disposal (but not often used) of the power grid operators. Something like $1 to $2/month/Kwh availability thru a V2G connection + another compensation of $x/Kw of peak power availability could be used.
Posted by: Harvey D | Nov 8, 2007 6:05:02 PM
