My name is Kevin Lynn and I'm director of
the Grid Modernization for Office of
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Today i wanted to talk about our Grid
Modernization Initiative. Grid
Modernization Initiative is a
cross-cutting initiative across all the
departments within Department of Energy
especially working with Office of
Electricity Delivery and Energy
Reliability to develop the tools and
technologies to measure, analyze, predict,
protect, and control the grid of the
future. Before we talk about the grid
future let's talk a little bit about the
grid of the 20th century first. So
grid of the 20th century. National
Academy of Engineering called this one
of the greatest engineering achievements
of the 20th century. It's been reliable
affordable means of producing and
delivering electricity for over a
hundred years. Basically we're looking at
large scale central generation provided
through to consumers through large-scale
transmission hundreds of miles of
transmission through a distribution
system to both residential, industrial
and commercial users. So some of the
fundamental aspects of this are this
again this large-scale central
generation with single way power flow
from generation to end-users. And for the
most part a passive energy user at the
other end of it. Someone that's basically
turning on appliances like loads like
refrigerators or air conditioning
systems etc. To basically power their
devices and they turn them on and off.
And most of the control for that system
is down at the generation side so the
large-scale generation side. So that's
what we basically have our
system of today. But moving into the
future we have a
few drivers of change. So some of those
drivers of change include this changing
supply mix. So one of the things we'll
have more and more of as they're coming onto the
system is intermittent wind
and solar. Another piece is security
threat. So we have more and more interest
from bad actors sort of both physically
attacking our power system like
transformers that are sort of very
important transformers that's
supply energy to a broad swath of the
power system. Or cyber attacks through
the information and communication
technologies basically getting into our
system and basically controlling our
system from the inside.
Also we have extreme events. So from
climate change we have more and more
large-scale hurricanes, large scales storms
like hurricane Katrina, hurricane Sandy
that are causing more more impact and
requiring us to be more resilient with
our existing power system. And then one
more exciting pieces of this is new
market opportunities. So in the past as I
mentioned the 20th century grid, we're really
looking at a consumer or consumers that
are basically passive users of
electricity. And hopefully in the future
there's potential where consumers not
only can be passive users but
also can be active users. Actually supply
energy or capacity of the system and
actually provide services to the grid to
make it work more reliably. So it's a
very exciting time to be part of
electricity and into electricity systems.
Let's cover some of these here. So here's
our 20th century grid and some of the
drivers could be adding intermittent
solar renewable solar systems on the
systems or on wind power. Some of the
challenges with that is basically you
can't necessarily predict its not
dispatchable. So when the Sun is out
and the sun is shining, solar
is generating electricity. The same is
true for wind power. Wind is blowing,
wind is generating electricity. But it's
not necessary dispatchable like
conventional generation where you can
just add fuel or remove fuel to balance
energy and load on both sides. So
basically you have to think about how do
I know when the sun is coming out? How
can I forecast wind and solar coming out?
How do i use technologies like energy
storage to balance some of the
intermitencies. We also think about
actually putting some of these
technologies at the residential side, so
we're actually putting some of our
generation on people's homes or on the
distribution side and actually having
power
generated at the distribution system
which is also a completely different way
of thinking about the system. So
thinking about how consumers could
actually play, actually provide services
to the grid. With this information and
communication technology backbone that's
now being built into the system we have
this internet of things, there's the
potential for actual visibility and
control of energy devices on the system.
This can include things like a rooftop
solar like you can see on that
little home there, or smart refrigeration
or smart water heaters, smart fuel cells,
smart electric vehicles. A whole range of
different technologies that are
intelligent where you have information
you can actually have visibility and
control on these systems. So the
sort of the two major aspects of that is,
how do I go from operating
system where you have major generation
really just controlling a few major
generators and now you could potentially
be could be controlling millions of
devices on the system. What is this
where the operational paradigm of that?
How do you do that? How do you get
information and visibility on the system
and control those devices together? And
then the second really major change of
this is where the the business model
implication.
So if you haven a number of consumers
that then can provide things like energy
or capacity to the system,
how do those consumers get paid for
those services that they are now
providing? So it becomes sort of a whole
new market opportunity for consumers.
People in the past have been just mainly
consumers actually provide these
services and how do you get paid to
actually provide a more reliable and
more secure more clean system moving
forward. And then as you create more of
these smart devices across the system
there's a need to be more secure.
So you're creating more surface area
more area for hacks and bad actors to
hack into the power grid. If you start
using all these different devices at the
edge of the system,
how do you make sure that the system is
secure both from an electric vehicle
standpoint or the solar from the solar
generator standpoint. Or the smart
thermostat standpoint all the way up
through the distribution transmission
and to large-scale generations. You have
to really think about security in a
whole
new way. And finally you know, thinking
about resilience, you could actually
think about if you're generating
electricity at the edge of
the grid you could consider thinking
about when the power goes out the entire
system, could I create a resilient micro
grid around a home or a small business
and actually provide balance generation
and load off the grid creating
resilience, bring the power back to
consumers before the electricity comes
back on. And then just waiting until
the the whole system comes up. And this
just makes the system more resilient. So
moving forward you know what we're
thinking about this grid modernization
initiative is some fundamental
attributes of the system. And so you know
the number of these things that are
pretty conventional with electrical
generation so you in the past we've
always want the system to be reliable,
we've always wanted the system to be
affordable. We're thinking with climate
change we need to be more resilient as
well so we need to be able to bring the
power back on quicker because of some of
the severity of some of the storms. Cyber
and physical attacks from bad actors
actually makes us think more about
security of the system. And of course you
know from Office of Energy Efficiency
Renewable Energy we're thinking about
making the system more clean. All these
pieces together really, we don't really
know exactly what the system is going to
look like in the future, so we need to
build whatever sort of attributes we
build a system, we need to make sure that
it's flexible. We can go in a variety of
different directions whether it's more
transmission, more distribution etc. So we
need to make sure that we keep the
system flexible as we make additions to
it. But you know one of the things I
think is really important is having more
energy choices. Whether it be from a
variety of different generation sources
or actually consumers making their own
personal choices. Whether it be rooftop solar,
electric vehicles, wind etc. Making sure
that there's fewer power outages so
making sure that the system is more
reliable we don't lose power for long
periods of time. And you know
one of the key pieces of this office
also is making it more cost effective as
we make sure that as we add all
these different attributes as we start
to change the system from this 20th
century to 21st century, we need to make
sure that it's a cost-effective
for all the consumers moving forward. So
as we know what is DOE's role?
So these are all great attributes this
is sort of the drivers of change how
things are moving these are the
attributes we know we need. What is DOE's
role moving forward in this sort
of research area? So I like to group
there's basically six technical areas
that we're working in together as the
department and these three really
fundamentally talk about sort of the new
way of operating the system. So you know
with devices and integrated systems we
talk about smart devices whether it be
smart photovoltaic systems, electric
vehicles, fuel cells, smart thermostats.
How do you develop intelligence
into those systems? How do you understand
what services much like energy storage,
what kind of services can those
different devices provide to the system?
You know thermal energy storage can
provide a number of the same kinds of
resources electrical energy storage.
Which you have to kind of know what
different devices will provide well what
kind of resources. And how not only do
those resources provide those devices
provide and from an individual
perspective but also from an aggregate
perspective. So if you have hundreds of
thousands of electric vehicles those
vehicles and aggregate can provide a
number of different services to the
grid, both energy capacity ancillary
services etc. So really understanding
fundamentally understanding how and if what
individual devices can do and how they
can work together as fundamental this.
The second piece is the sensing and
measurement. So there's there's a couple
of different aspects of this. So one is
sort of understanding what sort of
sensing a management strategy that you
need to have complete visibility across
the power system. Today fifty percent of
the distribution systems almost have no
visibility on them at all.
They have no idea of like what's
happening on those distribution systems.
So understanding how you distribute some
of the sensing and measurement
devices across the system is really
critical. And how do we build low-cost
building sensors,
distribution sensors and
transmission sensors and have them work
together pull all this data together and
use data analytics to actually create
knowledge for operators to make
decisions upon. So that's a really
critical piece. And once you make you
have that information, then system
operators can actually control the
system. So again getting back to the
original 20th century paradigm where you
have a few large-scale generators, potentially
now you have millions of
distributed generators. How do you
control the system based on all this
information that you just
gathered and actually control all these
millions of devices. And there's going to
be probably some hybrid of centralized
control and distributed
control as we move forward because it's
almost impossible to control all those
devices moving forward. So you know the
next piece is this design and planning
tools. So if I'm a public utility
commissioner or State Energy Office or
our consumer advocate and I see there's
all this new way of doing business
moving forward with the utility system I
need to know what kind of decisions do I
need to make in the next 10 to
20 years in order to build out
to make the investments necessary
to build out a system that works this
way. And so you need new tools existing
tool sets just won't let you plan for a
utility system that looks like this one
and the next 10 to 20 years. And so we're
building out some of those toolsets as
part of this. As a baseline for all this
you need to always build security and on
top of this and this is going to be more
important for many of the EERE
technologies as we move forward. And one
of the most important ones is this
institutional support. So at DOE we can do
all the R&D that we want but if we're
not sharing this information with the
regulators, with state energy offices,
with consumer advocates, consumers none
of this will actually be implemented, it will all
be on the shelf. So we need to
continually as we do R&D in these
five technical areas we need to
continually share that information and
provide resources and technical
assistance for those who are making the
actual funding decisions and building
out the grid of the future. So if you add
up all these attributes together with
these six different technical areas we're
working in, this is our grid
modernization basically the fundamental
of our Grid Modernization Multi-Year
Program Plan. So this was basically
formulated with all you know multiple
offices across the department. Also
13 of our national labs got together and
work together very hard to actually
help us develop this and we call them
our Grid Modernization Laboratory
Consortium. So much like the department
we're now working together to address
these grid modernization challenges. We
have the laboratories working together
in unison basically getting the best
of their their assets to actually work
work together and address these
challenges together. So that's
all really well and good. So what are we
actually doing? So the secretary in
January of this year announced a
three-year investment we had with these
13 national labs for up to 220 million
dollars to address for 88 projects to
address our multi-year program plan
basically. And with those projects we
have you know, it's not only just with
the National Laboratories but it's also
with a hundred different partners
including utilities, vendors,
non-governmental organizations, public
utility commissioners etc. And
one of the key things i wanted to take
away from this map one of the key areas
we wanted to work with is in our
pioneer partnerships. And part of that we
understood that,
hey grid modernization is not a static
thing we're not starting from zero. Grid
modernization is happening across the
country today. And so there's a number of
different areas whether it be California
New York the Southeast to Northwest. All
these areas are grappling with some of
the issues and some of those issues are
happening today.
So one was to go out and work out in the
country for help provide technical
assistance to those areas. And two,
understand that while you know we have
our attributes we have sort of our
vision there's a regional perspective. So
California may be very
interested and actually focusing on
integration of renewables. They have some
very ambitious targets but that may be
slightly different from New Orleans
where you know the resiliency and
reliability the grid with
high-impact storms coming through become
a big challenge for them. So that's
really a big part of of what we're
trying to achieve. And I think
in terms of one of the things I
wanted to make clear is moving forward
our future investment projects will be
with not just the labs but also with
universities, vendors, utilities,
commissions and also the national laboratories.
We realize that we have to have
a broad portfolio of people were working
with in order to achieve all the
challenges that we've laid out in our
multi-year program plan. So that's
critical for us. What are
some of the successes that we've had so
far? So one of the things that
we worked on with our national energy
systems integration facility
you with National Renewable Energy
Laboratory is a project in Hawaii. So
Hawaii, they've had an incredible number
of solar systems installed on the
island of Oahu. Somewhere around 48,000
at that point. But they had you know
2500, a certain number in the queue that
basically the Hawaiian Electric Company was
very nervous about. And one of the
interconnecting. They were nervous about
getting up to certain high penetration
and what would happen if there was a
ground fault on the system where there's
some problem and what would be the
impact of having all those PV systems
interconnected during a ground fault.
And what would happen to the system as a
result of that. So we did some testing at
the Energy Systems Integration Facility
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory
showed that the challenges that
associated with that particular problem
were pretty negligible and as a result
they let and additional 2500 pv systems
be interconnected on the island of Oahu
and basically uped and changed the sort of
the entire inner connection protocol to
enable more pv systems to be safely
interconnected to the grid. So that's part
of the kind of thing we want to do is
sort of address some of these challenges.
Some questions that utilities that
just haven't seen this kind of
integration or number of solar wind or
different technologies integrating the
system help them address that in a safe
virtual environment. And then it
enabled them to make the good
decisions moving forward. Enable
consumers to be happy as well.
The other another success that we've had
recently is with our Eastern
Renewable Grid Integration Study. So
we've done a series of kind of studies
like this basically looking at how much
renewables can we integrate into the
North American system. We've done a
series with these in the Western
interconnect. This is the first time
we've ever done one in the Eastern
interconnect and it was a huge endeavor.
Typically a report of this kind would
have taken you 500 days basically to
to run because it's such a large system
there's so much transmission there's so
much generation and there's so much
granularity in trying to run a model
like this. But using the high-performance
computer they have an NREL and doing some
parallelization with some of the models,
they're able to actually take some of
that
those 500 days and pull it down to 20
days. So you could actually understand
what the implication of putting this
number amount of renewables on the
system and a manageable way using new
tools, design and planning tools. Now this
gets kind of a dynamic chart here and
one of the things i want you to notice
as this little line comes across,
that's the Sun coming across and as
you'll see the yellow parts of the of
the chart sort of grow as
we come up in the day. And and these yellow
circles increase. Those are all solar
systems that are interconnected across
the east. And as you can see that the arrows
actually changed direction. So as the Sun
comes up you get a lot of generation. Arrow
flows from where is the sunniest and
power flows north. As you come down all
that sun goes away and it actually
fundamentally changes the way power
flows across the country. So this
is some of the challenges that we really
don't see necessarily because of sort of
the there's not as much national or
you know look across the eastern
interconnect. But using tools like this
you can see okay well yeah you can
put thirty percent you know renewable
solar and wind on the system but what
are the implications of that and whay are
the power flows as a result of that? And
what do we have to think about in
a system moving in the future that has
you know major power shifts moving
backward and forward as a result of that.
So these kinds of tools
that we're developing as part of this
initiative moving forward. So I encourage
you to either contact us at our grid
modernization initiative email or look
at our website. A lot of new exciting
things coming up a lot of new things
that will be posting up over the next
few months. But thank you very much for
your attention.