NREL Smart Grid projects

Summary form only given. Although implementing Smart Grid projects at the distribution level provides many advantages and opportunities for advanced operation and control, a number of significant challenges must be overcome to maintain the high level of safety and reliability that the modern grid must provide. For example, while distributed generation (DG) promises to provide opportunities to increase reliability and efficiency and may provide grid support services such as volt / var control, the presence of DG can impact distribution operation and protection schemes. Additionally, the intermittent nature of many DG energy sources such as photovoltaics (PV) can present a number of challenges to voltage regulation, etc. This presentation provides an overview a number of Smart Grid projects being performed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) along with utility, industry, and academic partners. These projects include modeling and analysis of high penetration PV scenarios (with and without energy storage), development and testing of interconnection and microgrid equipment, as well as the development and implementation of advanced instrumentation and data acquisition used to analyze the impacts of intermittent renewable resources. Additionally, standards development associated with DG interconnection and analysis as well as Smart Grid interoperability will be discussed.