Robert G. Pratt

Pacific Northwest GridWise™ Testbed Demonstration Projects; Part I. Olympic Peninsula Project

This report describes the implementation and results of a field demonstration wherein residential electric water heaters and thermostats, commercial building space conditioning, municipal water pump loads, and several distributed generators were coordinated to manage constrained feeder electrical distribution through the two-way communication of load status and electric price signals. The field demonstration took place in Washington and Oregon and was paid for by the U.S. Department of Energy and several northwest utilities. Price is found to be an effective control signal for managing transmission or distribution congestion. Real-time signals at 5-minute intervals are shown to shift controlled load in time. The behaviors of customers and their responses under fixed, time-of-use, and real-time price contracts are compared. Peak loads are effectively reduced on the experimental feeder. A novel application of portfolio theory is applied to the selection of an optimal mix of customer contract types.

Pacific Northwest GridWise™ Testbed Demonstration Projects; Part II. Grid Friendly™ Appliance Project

Fifty residential electric water heaters and 150 new residential clothes dryers were modified to respond to signals received from underfrequency, load-shedding appliance controllers. Each controller monitored the power-grid voltage signal and requested that electrical load be shed by its appliance whenever electric power-grid frequency fell below 59.95 Hz. The controllers and their appliances were installed and monitored for more than a year at residential sites at three locations in Washington and Oregon. The controllers and their appliances responded reliably to each shallow underfrequency event—an average of one event per day—and shed their loads for the durations of these events. Appliance owners reported that the appliance responses were unnoticed and caused little or no inconvenience for the homes’ occupants.

The Smart Grid: An Estimation of the Energy and CO2 Benefits

This report articulates nine mechanisms by which the smart grid can reduce energy use and carbon impacts associated with electricity generation and delivery. The quantitative estimates of potential reductions in electricity sector energy and associated CO2 emissions presented are based on a survey of published results and simple analyses. This report does not attempt to justify the cost effectiveness of the smart grid, which to date has been based primarily upon the twin pillars of cost-effective operation and improved reliability. Rather, it attempts to quantify the additional energy and CO2 emission benefits inherent in the smart grid’s potential contribution to the nation’s goal of mitigating climate change by reducing the carbon footprint of the electric power system.

GridWiseTM: The Benefits of a Transformed Energy System

This report presents a preliminary scoping assessment conducted to envision the general magnitude of several selected benefits the GridWise™ concept could offer when applied nationally. These benefits accrue in the generation, transmission and distribution components of the power grid as well as in the customer sector. The total potential benefit of implementing these technologies over the next 20 years is conservatively estimated have a present value (PV) of about

Residential real-time price response simulation

75 billion. When estimated on the basis of a less conservative implementation scenario, the PV of these benefits is shown to essentially double.

Transactive Control of Commercial Buildings for Demand Response

The electric industry is gaining experience with innovative price responsive demand pilots and limited roll-outs to customers. One of these pilots is investigating real-time pricing signals to engage end-use systems and local distributed generation and storage in a distributed optimization process. Attractive aspects about the approach include strong scalability characteristics, simplified interfaces between automation devices, and the adaptability to integrate a wide variety of devices and systems. Experience in this nascent field is revealing a rich array of engineering decisions to consider along with the application of complexity theory. To test the decisions, computer simulations are used to reveal insights about design, demand elasticity, and the limits of response (including consumer fatigue). Agent-based approaches lend themselves well in the simulation to modeling the participation and interaction of each piece of equipment on a distribution feeder. This paper discusses rate design and simulation experiences at the distribution feeder level where consumers and their HVAC systems and water heaters on a feeder receive real-time pricing signals.

Use of Residential Smart Appliances for Peak-Load Shifting and Spinning Reserves Cost/Benefit Analysis

Transactive control is a type of distributed control strategy that uses market mechanisms to engage self-interested responsive loads to achieve power balance in the electrical power grid. In this paper, we propose a transactive control approach of commercial building heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems for demand response. We first describe the system models, and identify their model parameters using data collected from systems engineering building (SEB) located on our Pacific Northwest National Laboratory campus. We next present a transactive control market structure for commercial building HVAC systems, and describe its agent bidding and market clearing strategies. Several case studies are performed in a simulation environment using building controls virtual test bed (BCVTB) and calibrated SEB EnergyPlus model. We show that the proposed transactive control approach is very effective at peak shaving, load shifting, and strategic conservation for commercial building HVAC systems.

Transactive Control and Coordination of Distributed Assets for Ancillary Services

In this report, we present the results of an analytical cost/benefit study of residential smart appliances from a utility/grid perspective in support of a joint stakeholder petition to the ENERGY STAR program within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Energy (DOE). The goal of the petition is in part to provide appliance manufacturers incentives to hasten the production of smart appliances. The underlying hypothesis is that smart appliances can play a critical role in addressing some of the societal challenges, such as anthropogenic global warming, associated with increased electricity demand, and facilitate increased penetration of renewable sources of power. The appliances we consider include refrigerator/freezers, clothes washers, clothes dryers, room air-conditioners, and dishwashers. The petition requests the recognition that providing an appliance with smart grid capability, i.e., products that meet the definition of a smart appliance, is at least equivalent to a corresponding five percent in operational machine efficiencies. It is then expected that given sufficient incentives and value propositions, and suitable automation capabilities built into smart appliances, residential consumers will be adopting these smart appliances and will be willing participants in addressing the aforementioned societal challenges by more effectively managing their home electricity consumption. The analytical model we utilize in our cost/benefit analysis consists of a set of user-definable assumptions such as the definition of on-peak (hours of day, days of week, months of year), the expected percentage of normal consumer electricity consumption (also referred to as appliance loads) that can shifted from peak hours to off-peak hours, the average power rating of each appliance, etc. Based on these assumptions, we then formulate what the wholesale grid operating-cost savings, or benefits, would be if the smart capabilities of appliances were invoked, and some percentage of appliance loads were shifted away from peak hours to run during off-peak hours, and appliance loads served power-system balancing needs such as spinning reserves that would otherwise have to be provided by generators. The rationale is that appliance loads can be curtailed for about ten minutes or less in response to a grid contingency without any diminution in the quality of service to the consumer. We then estimate the wholesale grid operating-cost savings based on historical wholesale-market clearing prices (location marginal and spinning reserve) from major wholesale power markets in the United States. The savings derived from the smart grid capabilities of an appliance are then compared to the savings derived from a five percent increase in traditional operational machine efficiencies, referred to as cost in this report, to determine whether the savings in grid operating costs (benefits) are at least as high as or higher than the operational machine efficiency credit (cost).

Transactive Controls: A Market-Based GridWiseTM Controls for Building Systems

The need to diversify energy supplies, the need to mitigate energy-related environmental impact, and the entry of electric vehicles in large numbers present challenges and opportunities to power system professionals. Wind and solar power provide many benefits, and to reap the benefits the resulting increased variability—forecasted as well as unforecasted—should be addressed. Demand resources are receiving increasing attention as one means of providing the grid balancing services. Control and coordination of a large number (~millions) of distributed smart grid assets requires innovative approaches. One such is transactive control and coordination (TC2)—a distributed, agent-based incentive and control system. The TC2 paradigm is to create a market system with the following characteristics: • Participation should be entirely voluntary. • The participant decides at what price s/he is willing to participate. • The bids and responses are automated. Such an approach has been developed and demonstrated by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for energy markets. It is the purpose of this project to develop a similar approach for ancillary services. In this report, the following ancillary services are considered: • spinning reserve • ramping • regulation. These services are to be provided by the following devices: • refrigerators • water heaters • clothes dryers • variable speed drives. The important results are summarized below: The regulation signal can be divided into an energy-neutral high frequency component and a low frequency component. The high frequency component is particularly well suited for demand resources. The low frequency component, which carries energy non-neutrality, can be handled by a combination of generators and demand resources. An explicit method for such a separation is obtained from an exponentially weighted moving average filter. Causal filters (i.e., filters that process only present and past values of a signal) introduce delays that can be issues in some signal processing applications that treat the high frequency part as a noise to be eliminated. For regulation, the high frequency component is an essential part of the signal. The delay in the low frequency component is not a problem. A stochastic self-dispatch algorithm determines the response of the devices to the regulation signal. • In an ensemble of devices under normal operation, some devices turn on and some turn off in any time interval. Demand response necessitates turning off devices that would normally be on, or turning on devices that would normally be off. Over time, some of these would have turned off on their own. A formalism to determine expectation values under a combination of natural and forced attrition has been developed. This formalism provides a mechanism for accomplishing a desired power profile within a bid period. In particular, a method to minimize regulation requirement can be developed. The formulation provides valuable insights into control. • Some ancillary services—ramping to absorb unforecasted increase in renewable generation, and regulation down—require the demand resources to increase their energy use. Some resources such as HVAC systems can do this readily, whereas some others require enabling technology. Even without such technology, it is possible to arrange refrigerators and water heaters to have an energy debt and be ready to increase their energy use. A transactive bid mechanism of revolving debt can be developed for this purpose. Dramatic changes in control systems, architecture and markets are expected in the electrical grid. The technical capabilities of a large number of devices interacting with the grid are changing. While it is too early to describe complete solutions, TC2 has attractive features suitable for adapting to the changes. The analyses in this report and the activities planned for FY 14 and beyond are designed to facilitate this transition.

Demonstration of the Whole-Building Diagnostician in a Single-Building Operator Environment

This paper discusses the advantages of a market-based controls program developed for the GridWise program.