Foundational Support Systems Webinars
Presented by: David A. Copp, Sandia National Laboratories
Thursday, April 12, 2018 | 1:00pm – 2:00pm ET
Power systems consist of many components distributed across wide geographic areas. A sudden increase or decrease in load or generation in these systems results in swings in power transfer between regions, called inter-area oscillations. Damping these inter-area oscillations is crucial for maintaining a secure and reliable power grid. In this webinar, we present distributed control schemes that can be used to improve the small-signal stability of large power systems. Implementations include the modulation of power transfer along a High Voltage DC transmission line, as well as injecting real power from distributed energy storage devices. This presentation will show results from several example power systems including the western North American Power System. Furthermore, it will discuss practical challenges arising from using remote measurements for feedback signals. Specifically, characterize the time delays associated with synchrophasor-based measurements and highlight the effect time delays have on stability of the distributed control system.
Presented by: Manimaran Govindarasu, Professor, Iowa State University
Thursday, December 21, 2017 | 1:00 – 2:00pm ET
Modern electric power grid is a complex cyber-physical critical infrastructure that forms the lifeline of our society, its reliable, secure, and resilient operation is of paramount importance to national security and economic well-being. In recent years, there has been growing concerns over the cybersecurity of the power grid, due to both from increasing trend of cyber-attacks and the sophistication of these attacks. For instance, cyber attacks on Ukrainian power grid in 2015 and 2016, and also increasing number attempts to infiltrate into grid infrastructures of many nations underscore the urgency and importance of this issue. This talk first focuses on the technical challenges associated with protecting the grid, and then discusses R&D directions and best practices to achieve cybersecurity. In particular, a holistic cybersecurity framework — encompassing attack deterrence, prevention, detection, mitigation, resilience, and attribution/forensics — is discussed. The concepts of end-to-end-security, defense-in-depth, attack-resiliency, and cybersecurity testbeds are also briefly discussed.
Presented by: Liang Downey, Business Development Executive for IBM’s New Energy and Environment Group
Thursday, October 5, 2017 | 1:00pm – 2:00pm ET
IoT creates huge amount of data and it can become a stress factor for organizations. A Cognitive New Energy System will consume less resources based on knowing the real-time energy demand, weather, consumption, thus it only generates the right amount of energy when and where it is needed. The system not only captures machine2machine and human2machine knowledge from the past by learning from each interaction but also be able to predict future behaviors.
To thrive amid the DER complexity and digital disruption, the new energy sector must overcome struggles unlocking the value of massive amount of IoT data that is largely underutilized to better manage system, offer new customer solutions that delights them, such as energy trading. Cognitive-based systems are unique in their ability to make sense of all kinds of data to build knowledge and provide confidence-weighted actions. This capability is critical to build the new energy future that is more distributed, flexible, efficient and sustainable.
Presented by: Jennifer Reeves, Senior Product Manager
GE’s Grid Solutions
For utility distribution operations center (DOC) personnel, a new type of intelligence called “situational intelligence” (SI) is emerging. The industry’s definition continues to evolve, but in general terms, SI can be defined as getting the right information to the right person at the right time, to support situationally intelligent decisions and actions. Big data and analytics software cannot give “intelligence” to an individual DOC operator. Too much information without the supporting expertise and process knowledge could lead to less effective decisions in the height of a storm.
This webinar - presented by Jennifer Reeves of GE's Grid Solutions - explores the eco-system of human behaviors, traits and supporting technological advances in the software user experience (UX) that will help utility companies foster a heightened level of situational intelligence in their DOC, resulting in better quality decision making and action taking at the height of a crisis.
Presented by: Josh Taylor, Assistant Professor - University of Toronto
Thursday, April 20, 2017 | 1:00 – 2:00pm ET
The intermittency of wind and solar power make it difficult to balance the supply of and demand for electric power. Energy storage and flexible load aggregations can solve this problem by storing power in times of surplus and releasing power during deficits. Presently, high costs and technical complexity hinder the use of storage and load flexibility in power systems.
In this webinar, we present the financial storage right, a new market mechanism that enables storage to participate in electricity markets in the same manner as transmission lines, and further enables risk-averse market participants to hedge against price volatility due to congestion.
Presented by: Mladen Kezunovic, Regents Professor, Director Smart Grid Center - Texas A&M University
Thursday, April 13, 2017 | 1:00 – 2:00pm ET
The issue of Big Data (BD) was introduced relatively recently as the enormous amounts of data became available through the space exploration, weather forecasting and medical biogenetic investigations. Social media and outlets such as Google, YouTube, Facebook and others have also faced similar problems of handling huge data sets.
The focus of this webinar is on different BD sources in the utility industry that range from field measurements obtained by substation/feeder intelligent electronic devices, to specialized commercial and/or government/state databases: weather data of different types, lightning detection data, seismic data, fire detection data, electricity market data, vegetation and soil data, etc.
Due to the massive amount of such data (terabytes) available in real time, and through historical records, processing and management of such data requires revisiting data analytics used in the BD industries such as banking, insurance and health care. This webinar will point out the BD characteristics in the power industry where the temporal and spatial properties, as well as correlation to the power system and component models are necessary for an efficient data uses.
Presented by: Sarah Truitt & Przemyslaw Koralewicz - National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Thursday, March 23, 2017 | 1:00 – 2:00pm ET
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), partnered with MIT Lincoln Laboratory, will host a competition to spark innovation in microgrid controller technologies where contestants will have access to controller-hardware-in-the-loop (CHIL) and power-hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) test beds to improve their technologies and compete for prizes.
Join this webinar to learn about the details and ask questions about the competition.
The Challenge is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Electricity and the Lab-Bridge pilot. The Lab Bridge pilot is part of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Technology-to-Market Program. Lab-Bridge enables the national laboratories to explore new solutions addressing the barriers they face when collaborating with outside partners and moving lab-developed technologies to market. Through small-scale projects, participating labs will implement and test new tools and approaches for increasing access to national laboratory resources and pushing lab innovations further toward market readiness.
Presenters: Jesse Gantz & Ethan Boardman from GE Grid Solutions and Alex Portilla from Pacific Gas & Electric
Thursday, March 9, 2017 | 1:00 – 2:00pm ET
Distributed Energy Resource Management (DERM) solutions lie at the intersection of operations and economics. Properly orchestrated, the inherent operational flexibility of DER can be leveraged by utilities to mitigate or prevent operational challenges, increase hosting capacity, defer network related capital upgrades and establish new revenue streams. But what does it mean to “put DERM on the desk”? Why and how should utilities incorporate DER management in day-to-day Grid Operations?
This webinar will address these questions as well as introduce the integrated DERM solution that is currently being deployed at Pacific Gas & Electric for a DERM pilot project. Topics will include project motivations and use cases, application of standards, solution architecture and sub-systems, DER control functions enabled by advanced inverters, as well as the DERMS user interface and a product demonstration.
Presented by: Michael I. Henderson, Director Regional Planning and Coordination - ISO New England
Thursday, December 15, 2016 | 1:00 – 2:00pm ET
New England presents an interesting case study to IEEE members interested in the system effects of energy efficiency, photovoltaics, wind expansion, and imports from neighboring systems. The current development and projections of these types of resources will be discussed along with some of the key policy drivers encouraging the development of renewable resources. The speaker will also discuss regional scenario analyses being performed to inform the region on key issues that must be addressed.
• Overview of New England
• Leader in - EE, PV, Potential for wind development (First offshore plant in US), Onshore HVDC and FACTS
• Policies continue encouraging development - RPS, MA – including storage
• Scenario Analysis Informing the region - Brief description of project, key findings, next steps
• Issue summary
Presented by: Tom Stanton - National Regulatory Research Institute &
Michael Coddington - National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Thursday, December 1, 2016 | 1:00 – 2:00pm ET
Distributed generation (DG) interconnection rules are already adopted by at least 32 states, detailing the procedures that applicants and utilities use to process applications expeditiously and ensure the DG systems will cause no harm to the utility system or any other interconnected equipment.
This Webinar briefly summarizes the current status of interconnection processes, and reviews the many updates that are now being developed within the IEEE 1547 and 2030 standards working groups. Those updated standards, along with rapid progress in modeling software used to evaluate proposed DG on utility distribution systems, offer the promises of: higher levels of grid hosting capacity for DG; vastly improved processing timelines for utilities; and reduced risks of DG negatively impacting electric reliability and overall safety. The webinar reviews best practices that are already facilitating safe and reliable interconnections in several jurisdictions, and explores additional improvements that could be adopted in the future.