Shedding Light on the Value of Solar Power
Pitt Researcher Receives $3MM DOE Award to Give Rural Utilities Behind-the-Meter Insights into Solar Power
A new project led by Paul Ohodnicki, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, will provide under-served rural and small electric utilities with access to new sensors and analytical tools that will give them a real-time picture of solar energy and other distributed energy resources throughout their systems. The project recently received $3 million from the Department of Energy through its Solar Energy Technologies Office.
For the United States to meet its goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050, renewable energy integrated across the grid will be key. But vast swaths of the country get their power from rural utilities with very limited real-time visibility of solar and other distributed energy resources installed by customers “behind the meter” (BTM). This lack of visibility creates challenges for the wide use of solar energy while retaining grid reliability and resiliency.
A new project led by Paul Ohodnicki, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the University of Pittsburgh Swanson School of Engineering, will provide under-served rural and small electric utilities with access to new sensors and analytical tools that will give them a real-time picture of solar energy and other distributed energy resources throughout their systems. The project recently received $3 million from the Department of Energy through its Solar Energy Technologies Office.
Titled “Fusion of Low-Cost Sensors and Distributed Analytics for Enhanced BTM Visibility,” it will combine new low-cost distributed sensors with “virtual sensors,” which aggregate and analyze existing data that is already being measured by installed solar inverters at the grid interconnection. In addition, the project will integrate both existing and new data streams into advanced analytics being developed by industry (GE Global Research) and utility (through the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, NRECA) partners on the project.
“The new sensors combined with the ‘virtual sensors’ and advanced analytics technologies being developed and deployed will give utilities a clearer understanding of the ways that higher penetration levels of solar power by their customers can ultimately benefit their service territories in terms of higher reliability and lower costs, rather than the traditional perspective that variability and intermittency of solar can introduce risks on the distribution system,” said Ohodnicki. “Giving utilities an improved understanding of the value of solar power generation behind the meter could help them to provide their customers with clear signals and incentives to promote a shift toward increased renewable energy.”
In addition to newly developed sensors, the project will also take advantage of state-of-the-art commercial micro-phasor measurement units (micro-PMUs) sensors. Micro-PMUs are a class of sensors that are capable of measuring electrical parameters with both time-synchronization and position identification through the global positioning system (GPS) in order to develop a map of the electrical state of the distribution system in real time.
“Giving utilities an improved understanding of the value of solar power generation behind the meter could help them to provide their customers with clear signals and incentives to promote a shift toward increased renewable energy.”
The researchers plan to aggregate data collected across a large number of newly developed sensor nodes, integrate them through commercial micro-PMUs to provide additional value and reduce communication costs, perform local analysis of aggregated data, and to provide a subset of that information to the utilities. Micro-PMUs are a sensor technology specifically for deployment on the distribution, originally inspired by phasor measurement units (PMUs) that were widely deployed on the transmission system in the 2010s as part of the Smart Grid Initiative.
The project was selected as a part of the SETO 2021 Systems Integration and Hardware Incubator funding program, an effort to advance research, development, and demonstration projects that will improve the affordability, reliability, and domestic benefit of solar technologies on the grid. It is one of several projects that will enhance solar energy’s contribution to grid resilience and reliability by developing communications systems that integrate distributed sensor measurements into utility data systems.
Ohodnicki will partner with researchers from North Carolina State University, Sandia National Laboratory, GE Global Research, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association on the project.
GE, which provides technology that supports one-third of the world’s electricity, brings deep technical and product experience through its renewable energy business and global research lab for enabling high penetration renewables and distributed grid integration.
“Co-operative utilities, whose service areas cover well over half of the entire U.S. landscape power more than 20 million customers, have a major role in the energy transition and meeting the nation’s emissions goals,” said Arvind Tiwari, program manager at GE Research.
“This is especially true with enabling increased PV penetration into the grid. We know from experience that by driving new advances in sensing, measurement, analytics and control technologies, we can bring more solar online while maintaining and even enhancing grid stability and reliability,” added Honggang Wang, principal investigator at GE Research.
The project will build on technology originally developed through the Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium, putting it to work in rural, traditionally underserved co-operatives with a goal of ultimately enabling widespread deployment and commercialization. The group is also partnering with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), which allows greater collaboration directly with rural utilities to facilitate technology adoption.
“As communities and electric co-ops plan for a future that depends on electricity to drive much of the economy, preserving reliability and improving resilience of our electric system is critical,” said Dr. Emma Stewart, NRECA’s chief scientist. “We’re excited to explore ways to expand the usefulness and adoption of solar and other distributed energy resources. Enhanced data sharing and improved visibility into the development of these technologies is an important part of the process. We look forward to working with the University of Pittsburgh to test new approaches that enhance DER visibility on the system and preserve reliability.”
About the Solar Energy Technologies Office
The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Energy Technologies Office supports early-stage research and development to improve the affordability, reliability, and domestic benefit of solar technologies on the grid. Learn more at energy.gov/solar-office.