Outcomes, Insights, and Best Practices from IIC Testbeds: Microgrid Testbed
This article gathers information from Industrial Internet Consortium’ s( IIC) Communication and Control Testbed for Microgrid Applications. The information and insights described in the subsequent paragraphs were captured in an interview conducted by Joseph Fontaine, VP of Testbed Programs at IIC, with Brett Burger, Principal Marketing Manager, Monitoring Solutions, at National Instruments.
TESTBED PROFILE
The history of the traditional power grid is large-scale, bulk power generation concentrated at large power plants. Power traditionally flowed downhill, transmitting to neighborhoods through feeders. It was stable, reliable( in developed nations) and, with a few sensor measurements, owners could understand what the network was doing. Microgrids break this traditional paradigm. The general concept of a microgrid is an arbitrary region that contains electrical generation, load, and optional storage. One use case for a microgrid includes adding resiliency and robustness to a traditional power grid.
Other use cases include remote power applications such as military forward operating bases or remote villages in developing nations where large populations are disconnected from the main infrastructure. In both cases, there may be a local grid with poor reliability or a diesel generator that requires trucking in fuel. In these situations, microgrids can reduce the reliance on imported fuel and improve electrical network reliability.
Though microgrids offer many benefits, they come with engineering challenges. Solar and wind generation is, by nature, more dynamic than power from nuclear or fossil fueled plants. Wind and solar generation both rely on power electronics designed to standards that assume the majority of generation is from large scale power plants. Microgrids break that assumption.
The IIC’ s Communication and Control for Microgrid Applications Testbed, or Microgrid Testbed, examines IoT technologies that can help solve these engineering challenges while focusing on open architectures and interoperability.
New Technology
One new technology examined in the Microgrid Testbed is Time-Sensitive Networking, or TSN. TSN is a set of standards governed by the IEEE 802.1 working group and adds, amongst other features, synchronization and scheduling to standard Ethernet.
Wind, solar, and on-grid battery storage use inverters to convert from DC power to the 50 Hz or 60 Hz AC power used in transmission and distribution systems. Inverter standards were created under with the assumption that they constitute a small percentage of capacity on a grid, effectively requiring an already stable network dominated by synchronous generation( Synchronous generators output AC power at grid frequency without the need for any conversion electronics).
That assumption, small percentage of renewables, is breaking down as some regions build up a higher percentage of renewable energy( think solar in southern California and wind in west Texas or off the coast of the UK). It also breaks down for
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