Lead Performer: Oak Ridge National Laboratory – Oak Ridge, TN
September 13, 2017
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Lead Performer: Oak Ridge National Laboratory – Oak Ridge, TN
Partners:
-- AgileSwitch – Philadelphia, PA
-- ROHM – Santa Clara, CA
DOE Total Funding: $1,350,000
Project Term: October 2016 – September 2018
Funding Opportunity: DOE Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium (GMLC) Lab Call
Project Objective
As a part of the Department of Energy’s Grid Modernization Initiative, the Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium projects represent a comprehensive portfolio of critical research and development in advanced storage systems, clean energy integration, standards and test procedures, and a number of other key grid modernization areas.
Within a modernizing grid, inverters for grid-tied distributed energy resources (e.g. PV, wind, or storage) serve as a hub for communications, monitoring, smart energy management, grid interaction, and safety. Current inverters primarily serve the function of AC-DC conversion for the benefit of PV generation, which legacy inverter hardware and software cannot be modified to provide advance grid functions. The objective of this project is to enable near real-time control and management of power electronics in buildings with distributed energy resources (DER) by developing a universal inverter driver interface using the VOLTTRON platform, which can easily replace or supplement existing inverter controllers allowing better integration of building to inverter connections (e.g. allowing installed single quadrant inverters to perform like multi-quadrant inverters and allowing better integration of those functions to building subsystems).
Project Impact
A universal inverter driver interface using the VOLTTRON platform can enable optimization of DER under different operating conditions, reducing integration costs and increasing DER utilization.
Contacts
DOE Technology Manager: Joe Hagerman
Principal Investigator: Madhu Chinthavali, PNNL