Status of the IEEE P1547 draft interconnection standard and distributed energy resources R&D

The Department of Energy (DOE) Distributed Power Program (DPP) is conducting work to complete, validate in the field, and support the development of a national interconnection standard for distributed energy resources (DER), and to address the institutional and regulatory barriers affecting the commercial adoption of DER systems. This work includes support for the IEEE interconnection standard development process, including P1547 Standard for Interconnecting Distributed Resources with Electric Power Systems, P1589 Standard for Conformance Test Procedures for Equipment Interconnecting Distributed Resources with Electric Power Systems, and the P1608 Application Guide. Work is also in progress on system integration research and development (R&D) on the interface and integration of control of DER with local energy systems. Additional efforts are supporting DER´s role in providing high-reliability power for industry, evaluating innovative concepts for DER applications, and exploring effective interface and control technologies for intelligent autonomous interconnection systems. This paper summarizes (1) the current status of the IEEE interconnection standards and application guides in support of DER and (2) the R&D in progress at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) for interconnection and system integration and application of distributed energy resources.