EPRI has published the five year update report regarding the EPRI Smart Grid Demonstration project.
The Smart Grid Demonstration Initiative is a seven-year collaborative research effort to design, deploy, and evaluate how to integrate distributed energy resources (DER) into utility grid and market operations. The Initiative utilizes multi-million dollar investments in the smart grid by the electric utility industry, with the goal of sharing information and research results on a wide range of smart grid technologies and applications. Twenty-four utilities from Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Japan and the United States are collaborating in the Initiative.
The Update contains additional lessons learned from research being conducted by members of the collaborative, in the form of case study briefs that summarize specific results of research projects. The case study briefs highlight projects conducted by 8 of 24 participating utilities. A spectrum of topics are covered, ranging from conservation voltage reduction to managing circuits with a high penetration of photovoltaic resources to determining how multiple smart grid technologies will interact. Examples of case study results include insights into how seasonal loads can affect conservation voltage reduction; how to obtain real-time information on when capacitor banks are failing; and how an autoground approach can be used for anti-islanding protection of distributed generation.
In this update EPRI also identifies technical reports and other publications that have been delivered as part of the Initiative at the five-year mark. This year they are organized by topic for easier reference. Among the documents listed are EPRI-developed studies on member-selected “strategic topics” related to research in the demonstrations. Strategic topics in 2012 were focused on distribution management systems and integration along with cyber security for field equipment. The strategic topics in 2013 include distributed energy resource (DER) architectures, high penetration of DER on distribution systems, and measurement and verification of conservation voltage reduction (CVR) and volt-var optimization (VVO)...(Read more...)
