This white paper focuses on "advanced microgrids," but sections do, out of necessity, reference today's commercially available systems and installations in order to clearly distinguish the differences and advances. Advanced microgrids have been identified as being a necessary part of the modern electrical grid through a two DOE microgrid workshops, 1 ' 2 the National Institute of Standards and Technology, 3 Smart Grid Interoperability Panel and other related sources. With their grid-interconnectivity advantages, advanced microgrids will improve system 4 energy efficiency and reliability and provide enabling technologies for grid-independence to end-user sites. One popular definition that has been evolved and is used in multiple references is that a microgrid is a group of interconnected loads and distributed-energy resources within clearly defined electrical boundaries that acts as a single controllable entity with respect to the grid. A microgrid can connect and disconnect from the grid to enable it to operate in both grid-connected or island-mode. Further, an advanced microgrid can then be loosely defined as a dynamic microgrid. The value of microgrids to protect the nation's electrical grid from power outages is becoming increasingly important in the face of the increased frequency and intensity of events caused by severe weather. Advanced microgrids will serve to mitigate power
Wind-solar-storage hybrid power plants represent a significant and growing share of new proposed projects in the United States. Their uptake is supported by increasing renewable energy market share, enhanced technical abilities for dispatch and control, and decreasing costs for wind energy, solar energy, and battery storage. Simultaneously, there is also increased use of generation and storage resources in distributed power systems. The diversification of energy resources through hybridization or spatial distribution provides an opportunity to enhance power system resilience (compared to single-source generation), addressing growing concerns about the reliability of the aging, transforming U.S. electric grid. The question of where to build hybrid plants for resilience value-rather than for bulk power supply-has not been fully explored in previous studies. Therefore, in this study we complete a national complementarity analysis to identify areas in the United States that are particularly suited for wind-solar hybrid power plant development. The authors show the importance of seasonal and diurnal patterns in assessing complementarity and identify that regions in the Great Plains, Midwest, and Southeast are particularly suited for hybrid power plants. We demonstrate the resilience value of hybridization for a reference system based near Memphis, Tennessee, and show optimal sizing of wind, solar, and storage assets given 1.0 and 0.9 critical load factors. Our results indicate that the pairing of wind and solar assets better meets constant load demand and reduces storage requirements compared to using only solar assets. These results will enable future work to integrate complementarity metrics with resilience frameworks. The results also indicate a need for more finely resolved data for local resources, demand, and hazards. v
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