Optimal net-load balancing in smart grids with high PV penetration
- Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA; Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
- US Army Research Lab, Playa Vista, CA
- Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Mitigating mismatches in supply demand curve is critical for smooth power grid operation. Traditionally, load curtailment techniques such as Demand Response (DR) have been used for this purpose. However, smart grids with high PV penetration sometimes exhibit supply surplus causing over-voltages. Thus, load curtailment techniques cannot be the only component of a net-load balancing framework. Supply curtailment techniques such as Volt-Var Optimizations are complex and computationally expensive. This increases the complexity of net-load balancing systems used by the grid operator and limits their scalability. Recently, new technologies have been developed that enable the rapid and selective connection of PV modules of an installation to the grid. Taking advantage of these advancements, we develop a unified optimal net-load balancing framework which performs both load and solar curtailment. We show that when the available curtailment values are discrete, this problem is NP-hard and develop bounded approximation algorithms for minimizing the curtailment cost. Our algorithms produce fast solutions, given the tight timing constraints required for grid operation. We also incorporate the notion of fairness to ensure that curtailment is evenly distributed among all the nodes. Finally, we develop an online algorithm which performs net-load balancing using only data available for the current interval. Using both theoretical analysis and practical evaluations, we show that our net-load balancing algorithms provide solutions which are close to optimal in a small amount of time.
- Research Organization:
- University of Southern California
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Solar Energy Technologies Office (EE-4S)
- DOE Contract Number:
- EE0008003
- OSTI ID:
- 1607628
- Report Number(s):
- EE0008003-10
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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