Executive SummaryBuildings consume 40% of the total energy in the U.S. and over 70% of the nation's total electricity today. Concerted efforts on both federal and state level have contributed to the flattening of electricity intensity in commercial buildings over the past decade, and declining energy intensity in homes.A new building diagnostic and controls revolution is underway within the buildings sector, primarily in the commercial buildings sector. In it, application-based systems are presenting an opportunity to implement strategies in which highly "optimized" control capable of constantly increasing efficiency levels while improving resource allocation (both local and global) is an inherent attribute of the strategy rather than an explicitly programmed feature. These building controls and algorithms can also be part of deep retrofits in existing buildings that result in energy savings not just today, but also ensure persistent energy savings over the life of the buildings through improved operation and maintenance. At the same time, the introduction of sensors and controls, as well as information technology and communication protocols between the buildings and the electric grid, has led to digitized sensing, metering, communication, and controls. This "smart grid" revolution is adding intelligence to the energy ecosystem, allowing power generators and grid operators to see the system at unprecedented levels of granularity. Added to these developments is the proliferation of photovoltaic cells, small-scale natural gas generators, as well as other distributed generation sources; giving building owners additional opportunities to reduce their energy costs and increase the reliability of their supply.Using these technological advances and careful coordination, buildings could provide valuable comfort and productivity services to building owners and occupants, such as automatically and continuously improving building operations and maintenance, while at the same time reducing energy costs. Ultimately, buildings could even act as dispatchable assets, providing services to the power system, such as absorbing the fluctuations of intermittent renewable energy.This document proposes a framework concept to achieve the objectives of raising buildings' efficiency and energy savings potential benefitting building owners and operators. We call it a transaction-based framework, wherein mutually-beneficial and cost-effective market-based transactions can be enabled between multiple players across different domains. Transaction-based building controls are one part of the transactional energy framework. While these controls realize benefits by enabling automatic, market-based intra-building efficiency optimizations, the transactional energy framework provides similar benefits using the same market-based structure, yet on a larger scale and beyond just buildings, to the electricity market and the society at large.The premise of transaction-based control is that interactions between various components in a complex energy syste...
The team also wishes to acknowledge Dennis Stiles and Rob Pratt for their management support; Jason Fuller, Andrew Fisher, Laurentiu Marinovici for their technical assistance running GridLAB-D simulations; Dave Winiarski for his technical insights and guidance; and Marye Hefty who assisted in the project planning and analysis of industry comments. v
This paper investigates the control strategies for distributed energy resources (DERs), including diesel generators, energy storage and demand response (DR), to achieve high penetration of wind energy in a rural microgrid. In such a system, it could be both economical and environmentally friendly to harness wind power and displace the consumption of fossil fuels. In the study, energy storage and DR are used to contain frequency deviations and reduce diesel generators' movement, while maximizing the use of wind energy. Detailed dynamic models of DERs and household loads are built to simulate the microgrid. Combinations of centralized (direct control) and decentralized (autonomous response) control strategies on DERs are implemented. The control capabilities of each type of DERs are also explored under different scenarios. The system responses under high wind speeds and to large disturbances are tested. Results show that coordinated DR and energy storage can effectively compensate for wind variability as well as provide desired frequency response. This consequently reduces the movements of diesel generators and thereby the amount of mechanical stress.Index Terms-microgrid control, wind power, distributed energy resources, centralized control, decentralized control, demand response, energy storage, smart grid Shuai Lu (M'06) is a Senior Research Engineer at PNNL. He has led many R&D projects for DOE and the electric power industry. His experience includes integration of renewable resources, power system dynamics modeling, power system operations, and demand response. Prior to joining PNNL in 2006, Dr. Lu conducted research on the design of an undersea power and communication network to be deployed in the northeast Pacific Ocean. He also designed digital controllers and models for static var compensators (SVC). He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Tsinghua University, China, and doctorate from the University of Washington, all in Electrical Engineering.
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