Faculty and Student Teams Program

Project Descriptions

Los Alamos National Laboratory
Data, Analysis, Modeling and Simulation of Smart Electric Grids

Requesting applications from science or engineering faculty members at institutions serving students underrepresented in science, engineering, mathematics and technology.

Project Description
 
The electric power system, while aged, has been very successful at providing stable and reliable power to its customers. The situation is, however, set to transform in the coming decades.  Over the next five years we anticipate that many of the trends that will later become the norms will be established. The most significant changes that we believe will take place are

1. Growth in the installations of utility scale wind and solar (mostly CSP) plants driven by regulations and incentives. The next five years will be crucial in reducing cost through economy of scale and technological improvements, through learning by doing, and through improved and more efficient manufacturing processes and systems integration. To capitalize on their potential for replacing fossil-fuel fired electric power, we must address the problem of integrating these intermittent resources, with fast ramp up and ramp down time scales of order minutes, into the grid and converting their potential into dispatchable capacity.
2. Distributed Generation (DG) via solar PV installed by homeowners and businesses. These systems have the potential to reduce the load presented to the grid and create the framework for scheduling flexible load in response to price and generation signals.  The demands on the grid with DG reaching 20%, 30%, … 75% of total capacity of a feeder line need to be understood and strategies for protection against, and mitigation after, rare cascading events developed.  Properly implemented, such grids offer the potential for being more robust.
3. Emergence of plug in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV). PHEV will reduce emissions from the transport sector by reducing the amount of gasoline we consume. Properly integrated, PHEV batteries could be used as storage devices (on average 5 kWh each) from which power can be drawn in time of need in order to help balance the load and stabilize the grid. On the other hand the current grid is not set up to handle a number of fast charging batteries (10 KW for an hour) being plugged in simultaneously and drawing power from a single feeder line. Strategies for scheduling charging times by providing price incentives, and the framework for monitoring compliance, need to be developed.

This transformation, and the associated economic opportunities, cannot be realized without the development of control and communication networks to monitor and schedule the load, anticipate and mitigate fast changes in renewable generation, and prevent disruptions to keep the grid stable, reliable and secure as the system increases in complexity.

Los Alamos has a significant effort in understanding the electric power grid and is applying its capabilities in data management and analysis, modeling and simulations to plan the future grid and communication system.

Project Goals

The faculty and students will collaborate on first understanding current systems using New Mexico grid as the example. They will then need to evaluate what additional data need to be collected, understand in detail how load balancing and stability are achieved and how the anticipated control and communication system will facilitate new approaches, and based on this understanding develop models and simulations to understand how the three above stated changes we anticipate will be integrated.

Qualifications of Ideal Candidates

Faculty:
Ph.D. in electric power systems or control theory;  have experience in applying state of the art tools in information theory and computational science to power systems research. Should be able to work well in a collaborative environment with students and other researchers. Should have taught courses on these and related materials and be willing to develop a pedagogical framework for the students. Possesses good written and verbal communication skills. Willing to work at LANL for an extended period during the summer.

Student:
Working towards a BS in engineering or computer science with an emphasis on electric power systems or on energy and environmental problems. Have good programming skills and be willing to learn tools like MatLab and GridLab for analysis of power systems. Works well in collaboration with faculty, other students, and researchers. Possesses good written and verbal communication skills. Willing to work at LANL for an extended period.

Contact Information

Scott Robbins
Education and Post-doc Office
P.O. Box 1663, MS M709
Los Alamos National Lab
Los Alamos NM 87544
srobbins@lanl.gov
505 667 3639 (O)
505 665 6871 (F)

Support and Financial Commitments

See Financial Information.