Summary:
Rapid and dramatic changes have been occurring in the electrical distribution systems all around the world during the past two decades. There are many drivers have been providing the impetus for these changes such as new sensors, technologies, renewable energy sources and looped/meshed topologies. These developments also have been creating challenging needs and opportunities for new models, tools and techniques to design, plan and operate the emerging systems. The primary focus of this presentation is to identify the advances that are evolving in distribution automation and real-time operations. In this process, the talk will emphasize the need for leveraging the intelligence of, and information provided by, sensors, energy boxes and smart meters to integrate Distributed Energy Sources (DER) with Distribution Management Systems (DMS) to enhance optimal performance of the emerging distribution Grid. The goals are to improve the load factor, reliability and efficiency. This need builds on the U. S. DOE Vision towards an Intelligent North American Grid by 2050.
The first part of the presentation will also focus on the following specific areas: Cold load pick-up, solar swing management, advanced and adaptive Protection for grid and DER modelling. The results achieved to date in these topics will be presented and discussed.
The past decade has witnessed unprecedented growth in “microgrids” all around the world. The U. S. is the leader in this venture. Currently more than 100 active projects are occurring around the globe. The primary goal of developing microgrids is to achieve the highest level of performance in reliability, power quality, safety, security and customer satisfaction. Recently an additional focus has been to create microgrids to improve network resilience.
The second part of the presentation will provide an overview of this powerful concept, history, types, sizes and modes of operation. This talk will also focus on the relatively new performance measure of resilience as applied to microgrids and their profound benefits to the society. In addition, research opportunities for other related topics will be identified for the benefit of engineers and operators in the field.
