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Title: SunDial – An Integrated SHINES System to Enable High-penetration Feeder-level PV

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1615918· OSTI ID:1615918
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  1. Fraunhofer USA Inc., Plymouth, MI (United States)
  2. IPKeys, Tinton Falls, NJ (United States)
  3. National Grid, South Weymouth, MA (United States)
  4. National Grid, Greater Boston Area, MA (United States)
  5. National Grid, Worcester, MA (United States)

The Project Team of Fraunhofer USA, National Grid, and IPKeys developed and conducted a pilot deployment of the SunDial system, a virtual power plant platform that enables high-penetrations of solar PV to be integrated into the distribution grid. The pilot was conducted over a 15-month period from August 2018 through October 2019 on a National Grid distribution feeder in Shirley, MA. A vendor-agnostic control platform (the “Global Scheduler”) optimally shaped the net load for a virtual portfolio of non-co-located DERs based on user-defined policy objectives. The goal of the SunDial project was to simplify and reduce the risk associated with the deployment of solar in high-penetration environments by: (1) Developing an open-source, vendor-agnostic dispatch platform that can be readily adapted to optimize control of DERs over a variety of use cases; (2) Developing auto-calibrating load and solar prediction methodologies that can be readily implemented and scaled to new deployments; (3) Developing a methodology to use demand-side management with traditional electrochemical energy storage to provide “load shaping” services in high solar penetration environments; (4) Using grid-scale storage to minimize short-term intermittency association with PV production; and (5) Deploying on the National Grid distribution system to gain experience on the potential for (and limits of) integrated storage with demand-side management.

Research Organization:
Fraunhofer USA Inc., Plymouth, MI (United States); IPKeys, Tinton Falls, NJ (United States); National Grid, South Weymouth, MA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office; Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC), Boston, MA (United States)
Contributing Organization:
Massachusetts Clean Energy Center, National Grid, IPKeys
DOE Contract Number:
EE0007164
OSTI ID:
1615918
Report Number(s):
DOE-FRAUNHOFER-0007164-1
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English