A peek into the AIR Microgrid and the stories that made this collaborative research possible, featuring Principal Investigator and Professor Arif Sarwat, students of EPSi and Dean of the College of Engineering and Computing John L. Volakis.
“This transformative research can help pave the road for providing local and global communities with increased resiliency for riding through extreme weather and power grid events,” Dr. Sarwat said.You can find more information from the project lead, Eminent Scholar Chaired Professor Arif Sarwat, at eps u .
The word "unique" gets attached to so many energy projects, it hardly has meaning anymore. But a new microgrid now operating near Tampa, Florida, lives up to the billing because of the technology it uses, the customers it serves, and the cost recovery structure it employs.
Located in the Southshore Bay housing development in Hillsborough County, the project serves 37 homes, itself unusual given microgrids are typically installed for businesses, institutions or government services. While home or neighborhood microgrids are beginning to crop up, they remain rare.
Join Emera Technologies for a special session at Microgrid 2022: "Microgrids for Homes and Neighborhoods" on June 2 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Hurry! Tickets to the two-day event are selling briskly!
Developed by Emera Technologies using what it calls BlockEnergy, the project makes each home into a nanogrid with its own solar, batteries and control technology. An inverter converts the microgrid''s direct current (DC) power to alternating current for use inside the home.
The homes are then connected together via a cable network system — a DC bus — that loops through the neighborhood. This allows the homes to share their energy resources.
If the solar panels on the homes don''t generate enough power at any given time, the homes have a fallback system — a central energy park run on solar and natural gas that is located near the neighborhood''s entrance and connects to the homes'' network.
Emera Technologies is a subsidiary of Canadian utility Emera, which explains why the company is keenly interested in the utility market for microgrids. In this case, Emera Technologies partnered with Tampa Electric (TECO), a utility that serves 800,000 customers in west central Florida. TECO bought the BlockEnergy system from Emera Technologies and owns and operates the microgrid. That leads to the third aspect of the project that is unique — its utility cost recovery mechanism.
The counterargument is that microgrids can serve the broader grid by providing demand response and ancillary services — which benefits all. A microgrid can also provide help beyond its immediate footprint by acting as a refuge during a power outage — creating a place where people from throughout the utility service territory can seek shelter from severe heat or cold, charge phones, fuel vehicles and get food and supplies.
The Florida Public Service Commission said it would let TECO recover costs for the $1.99 million for the Southshore Bay pilot project.
To Emera the decision makes sense because it reflects what utilities do as part of their normal cost of business — invest in and maintain assets for their useful life.
"Utilities are expert operators, which makes BlockEnergy a win-win for customers and utilities alike. Customers benefit from more renewable energy with a step change in reliability, but without the upfront costs or ongoing maintenance of making the investments themselves in rooftop solar battery storage or backup generation. The technology [BlockEnergy] allows utilities to do what they do best, invest in rate base with economies of scale, and [optimize] the flow and sharing of energy sources to reduce the overall cost for all customers," said Scott Balfour, Emera president and CEO, during the utility''s most recent earnings call.
Several home or neighborhood microgrids are in some stage of planning and may or may not come to be. But the Southshore Bay project is up and running — and has been for several weeks, according to Chris Hooper, chief operating officer at Emera Technologies.
Emera Technologies announced the project in October 2020 and has since taken a cautious approach to building out the microgrid, adding homes incrementally because it was TECO''s first venture into this kind of project. The company energized homes as residents moved in. The homeowners pay for electricity at the same metered rate as they normally would, with no extra grid charges or other fees for the microgrid''s reliability and sustainability benefits.
The project won a place earlier this year on Microgrid Knowledge''s list of 22 microgrids to watch in 2022.
Dave Pickles, vice president of electric delivery at Tampa Electric, described the Southshore Bay microgrid as a way to offer "a new layer of control, operability and flexibility. It''s one that can directly benefit our customers and help us to realize our net-zero vision."
Here are more details about the Southshore Bay microgrid:
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Elisa Wood is the editor and founder of EnergyChangemakers . She is co-founder and former editor of Microgrid Knowledge.
At Florida International University (FIU), researchers are utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) as an important tool that creates new ways for microgrids to provides resilience, cut carbon emissions, and aid the grid when it''s stressed.
At the university, a microgrid that serves the engineering campus is also enabling long-term research utilizing a 1MW system that mimics the buildings on the engineering campus that have a peak load profile of roughly 1 MW.
In ongoing research, the system uses AI to determine when the grid may be faltering. Then – ahead of an outage - the AI islands the microgrid and creates a smart city in which the buildings on the engineering campus continue to be powered.
"The whole engineering campus operates like an independent city, complete by itself with its own generation and storage continuing to deliver electricity to 10,000 students and faculty members on the university''s engineering campus," said Alexander Stevenson, graduate research assistant and lab coordinator for FIU''s Energy, Power and Sustainability Group.
Energy resilience important with high heat, hurricanes and thunderstorms
This type of resilience can be especially helpful in Florida, which experiences high heat, occasional hurricanes and frequent thunderstorms that can destabilize the grid.
The microgrid is a joint project between FIU and Florida Power & Light Company (FPL), which invested $15.5 million to build the lab at the FIU-FPL Solar Research Center where the microgrid research is taking place.
FPL installed the microgrid to conduct research at FIU in 2020, and is continuing to make modifications to it to provide additional benefits to the research buildings and learn about the technology.
The research has generated much interest, especially from federal agencies, said Arif Sarwat, a professor in FIU''s department of electrical and computer engineering and the director of the FIU-FPL Solar Research Center.
Federal agencies following FIU''s progress
"Our control room is visited almost every week by agencies. The government is very high on microgrids," he said. What''s most unique about this "next-generation microgrid" is how it utilizes AI, Sarwat said.
AI decides how the microgrid will be deployed. However, in most microgrids, AI is used as a secondary function, not to control a microgrid, he explained.
The FPL/FIU microgrid can use many different kinds of fuel sources, including renewable energy, diesel and potentially hydrogen in the future.
"This is the first microgrid that has used AI for control and operations," said Sarwat. "Others use it for secondary processes, not in the main line of operations. The others use basic logic: if-then scenarios."
Forecasting clouds over solar panels
As part of its work in the microgrid, AI forecasts weather and load conditions, as well as power costs, and then tells the microgrid how to function - both in the short term - and long term, he said.
For example, AI can predict whether the region will be cloudy a few days ahead to ensure the batteries are filled with solar power before the clouds arrive. Another microgrid innovation at FIU: The main inverter is a grid-forming inverter. "Most microgrids don''t have this technology," said Sarwat. "We are the first to use a grid-forming inverter at this level."
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