PSERC Webinar Slides for Feb. 1, 2011

In this talk I will review concepts, programs and technologies aimed at enlisting demand response that evolved since the early 80's. While the technology has reached a point where many of the early experimental programs and concepts have become feasible and cost effective, the economic paradigm for demand response has not changed much. While electricity is traded as a commodity at the wholesale level, at the retail level demand response programs can be framed as "quality of service differentiation". Given this premise I will describe some economic paradigms for characterizing and pricing demand response programs that can underlie business models for intermediaries aggregating retail level load control into tradable wholesale market commodities.

Slides for PSERC Webinar on Mar. 1, 2011

Comparedto the conventional grid, the smart grid requires active participationof consumers to improve the quality and reliability of power delivery.The increase in consumer participation is expected from the AdvancedMetering Infrastructure (AMI), commonly known as the smart meter, whichhas the capability of supporting various functions beyond that ofrecording energy usage. One of the primary objectives of the AMI is toallow load and cost management for the utility. This is envisionedpartly through a communication system implemented between the smartmeter and consumer equipment, currently deployed using wirelessnetworking solutions such as ZigBee. Due to the shared nature of thewireless medium, however, these deployments face security challenges andinterference issues, which must be addressed, taking into account theinterests of both the utility company and the customer. Recent consumerbilling complaints and subsequent investigations on wireless-based smartmeter deployments highlight the criticality and timeliness ofaddressing these issues. In this talk I will take a comprehensive lookat wireless security in the smart meter-based home-area network scenarioby identifying a wide range of possible attacks. Further, I willdiscuss countermeasures that can be used by both the utility company aswell as the customer, and integrate them into a common framework thatcan be agreed to by both.   

Slides for PSERC Webinar on March  15, 2011

This webinar presents the results of the first part of PSERC Project M21, Technical and Economic Implications of Greenhouse Gas Regulation in a Transmission Constrained Restructured Electricity Market. In this part of the project, a carbon tax was introduced into an ac optimal power flow (OPF) model with an assumption of perfectly competitive greenhouse gas and electric markets. The resulting emission-incorporated ac OPF is used to study the effects on system dispatch and operating costs of increasing carbon prices and the introduction of renewable energy (wind and solar) and storage into the system. AC OPF results demonstrate the importance of congestion on CO2 emission reductions. The results of the OPF are significantly different from ordinary economic dispatch calculations In addition. CO2 reductions are sensitive to a number of other factors, including congestion, load level and fuel price. Depending on natural gas and coal prices, it may require a very high CO2 price to reduce CO2 emissions in existing systems by switching from coal-fired generation to gas-fired generation. Renewable generation reduces system CO2 emissions, but the emissions of reserve units required by lower renewable capacity factors must be included. The reductions in CO2 emissions are a complex calculation that includes generation characteristics (ramp rates and cost functions), transmission congestion, and the number of fossil-fired generators online as reserve units. Conventional control of energy storage to minimize operating costs tends to increase CO2 emission because storage is charged by high-carbon coal off-peak and offsets lower-carbon natural gas as it discharges on-peak.

Slides for PSERC Webinar on Mar. 29, 2011

Greenhouse gas regulation aimed at limiting the carbon emissions from the electric power industry will affect system operations and market outcomes. The impact and the efficacy of the regulatory policy depend on interactions of demand elasticity, transmission network, market structure, and strategic behavior of generators. This paper develops an equilibrium model of an oligopoly electricity market in conjunction with a cap-and-trade policy to study such interactions. We study their potential impacts on market and environmental outcomes which are demonstrated through a small network test case and a reduced WECC 225-bus model with a detailed representation of the California market. The results show that market structure and congestion can have a significant impact on the market performance and the environmental outcomes of the regulation while the interactions of such factors can lead to unintended consequences.

Slides for PSERC Webinar on April 5, 2011

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) mitigation policies, such as CO2 cap-and-trade, help to reduce the consumption in fossil energy and promote a shift to renewable energy resources. The regulation of CO2 emission from electric power industry to mitigate global warming brings a new challenge to generation companies (GENCOs). In a competitive market environment, GENCOs can schedule their production and maintenance periods to maximize their profits. Independent System Operator’ s (ISO) functionality is considered from the view point of system reliability and cost minimization. Considering the new effects of CO2 emission regulation, GENCOs need to adjust their scheduling strategies in the electricity market and bidding strategies in CO2 allowance market. In this presentation, the mechanism of CO2 cap-and-trade and CO2 allowance market will be introduced. Then the emission-constrained generation scheduling problem (GSP) involving generation maintenance scheduling, unit commitment and CO2 cap-and-trade will be investigated. This new GSP is formulated as a Mixed Integer Bi-Level Linear Programming (MIBLP) problem. A novel solution methodology is developed, and simulation results based on the PJM 5-bus system test case demonstrate that the proposed MIBLP-based model is able to provide valuable information for GENCOs’ decision making in both electricity and CO2 allowance markets.

Slides for PSERC Webinar on April 19, 2011

There are several areas where the addition of more advanced sensor and monitoring technology can improve the remaining life expectancy estimations. This webinar reports on research that developed an optimization methodology to minimize the cost and select the proper transformer size for new applications and to optimize the replacement of transformer for an existing system (retrofit applications). It is anticipated that the method described here will help utilities in making decisions to minimize revenue requirements of the transformer over the long run to attain overall economic efficiency. Following the concepts of per-unit life, relative aging factor, equivalent aging, and end-of-insulation-life criteria, two simple equations were developed to estimate the transformer remaining life. A Windows-based, object oriented program was created to calculate the hottest-spot temperature, the top-oil temperature, and the bottom-oil temperature for each model. The program also calculates the loss-of-insulation-life, the remaining life, and energy losses following the methodology developed in this research.

Slides for PSERC Webinar on May 3, 2011

Plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) have been identified as a vital technology to reduce carbon emissions and dependence on petroleum. The emerging fleet of PEVs will introduce a considerable amount of additional load on the power system. We analyze the electric energy and power consumption of light-duty PEVs under uncontrolled and controlled charging scenarios. The analysis is based on information extracted from the 2009 National Household Travel Survey, which collects information on the travel behavior of a national representative sample of U.S. households. For controlled charging, a PEV aggregator that participates in the wholesale electricity market is considered. The aggregator’ s objective is to maximize energy trading-related profits. A minimum-cost load scheduling algorithm is designed. The algorithm determines the purchase of energy in the day-ahead market based on the forecast electricity price and PEV power demands. Also, a dynamic dispatch algorithm is developed for distributing the purchased energy to PEVs on the operating day. Simulation results are used to evaluate the proposed algorithms, and to demonstrate the potential impact of an aggregated PEV fleet on the power system.

Slides for PSERC webinar on June 7, 2011

This webinar will describe results of efforts to perform long-term energy and transportation system infrastructure planning at a national level, in terms of a new software application and results of using that software on data characterizing US energy and transportation infrastructure. The software, called NETPLAN, is a multi-objective optimizer that models national energy systems (electric generation and transmission, and the fuel systems which supply them), together the transportation systems used to move both freight and passengers. NETPLAN identifies 40-year infrastructure investment strategies, at the national level, which are “ good” in terms of low capital and operating costs, low environmental impact (including CO2 emissions), and high resiliency.

PSERC Webinar Slides for August 10, 2011

The rapidly increasing levels of renewable energy sources, particularly variable sources such as wind and solar, coupled with the expected increases in demand-side participation and deployment of electricity vehicles are all pointing towards a dramatic change to the electricity grids along with significant research challenges and opportunities. This webinar will explore some of these challenges, propose possible research directions, and highlight opportunities for researchers, industry and government entities.

Slides for PSERC Webinar on Sep. 6, 2011.

California’ s administration, legislature, and energy regulators have adopted aggressive targets for renewable energy which will result in profound changes in markets and system operations as the resource portfolio shifts from heavy reliance on natural gas as a fuel for electric generation to intermittent, often remote, resources. As part of determining workable modeling approaches as changes in market design are considered, this webinar examines the use of a 240-bus model as a realistic test system for the California and WECC market.

PSERC Webinar Slides for September 27, 2011

The Smart Grid Initiative (SGI) encourages integration of storage and peak-shaving technologies including plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) to the electric distribution system for enhancing performance and efficiency. PHEV sales in the US are expected to significantly increase in the car and light-truck market primarily due to their potential to lower fuel costs by reducing fossil fuel consumption and to lower emissions. In this talk, a methodology is proposed to determine the impact of penetration of a PHEV fleet with vehicle-to-grid (V2G) capabilities on electric distribution systems. The methodology builds on the results of an existing probabilistic simulation of daily behavioral characteristics of a PHEV fleet to determine charging patterns of the fleet vehicles (by Meliopoulos et al.), which are then used for utility peak-shaving purposes through a linear programming (LP) optimization method. The charging patterns of the simulated PHEV fleet are used to determine the impact of PHEVs on the reliability of a distribution test system under islanded mode of operation, i.e., a microgrid. This webinar is based on research in the PSERC project “ Implications of the Smart Grid Initiative on Distribution Engineering.”

Webinar slides for October 4, 2011

Power grids are increasingly stressed, having to integrate renewables, and moving towards some form of distributed control. All of these factors, and others, require much better communications. Supporting data delivery services must support a wide range of delivery characteristics (e.g., latency, rate, availability/criticality) and operate on ranges of geographic scales and data volumes. Further, many emerging applications require extremely low latencies and extremely high availability, ones that cannot be completely met by commercial technologies directly. In this seminar, we overview such emerging applications and their requirement(s). We then discuss practical implementation issues involving and providing such advanced data delivery services. Finally, we overview the emerging NASPInet as well as our GridStat data delivery system which implements NASPInet.

PSERC Webinar Slides for Oct. 26, 2011

Simulation of the transient stability problem, which is the assessment of the short term (several to 30 seconds) angular and voltage stability of the power system following a disturbance, is of vital importance. For some portions of the North American power grids, such as the Western Electric Coordinating Council (WECC), transient stability has always been an important consideration, while for other portions it is of growing concern due partially to the widespread integration of wind generation. It is widely known in the industry that different transient stability packages can give substantially different results for the same (or at least similar) system models. This presentation presents results from a PSERC project that investigated the source of these differences. The presentation will also provide a discussion of transient stability validation methodologies.

Slides (without builds) for the PSERC webinar on Nov. 1, 2011

Slides (with builds) for the PSERC webinar on Nov. 1, 2011

For the Nov. 1, 2011, webinar

Slides for PSERC Webinar on Dec. 13, 2011

There is a growing interdependence between energy and water and the sustainable infrastructure applications needed for producing or treating both. It takes significant amounts of energy to treat, process, and move water and wastewater. In turn, thermal generation (e.g., coal plants, natural gas plants, concentrating solar plants and nuclear plants) requires tremendous water resources to keep plants running smoothly. With growing global populations (the United Nations estimates that the world's population will go from 6.7 billion today to 10 billion in 30 years), climate change, antiquated energy and water infrastructure and a finite amount of resources (we can't just create more water and fossil fuels are not renewable), we need to reduce the amount of energy to treat, process, and move water and wastewater, and reduce the amount of water used for thermal power generation.