Matt O Donnell

Dean: College of Engineering

University of Washington

John Chapman

University of Washington

Smart Building Program at University of Washington

The University of Washington is a participant in the Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project, which is partially funded with a grant from the US Department of Energy. This presentation will describe the smart grid demonstration technologies being deployed on the UW Seattle Campus, and the partnership between the UW Administration and academic research programs.

Anjan Bose

Washington State University

Smart Pullman and WSU Microgrid as part of the PNW Demonstration Project

The Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project is a large project spread over five states and many organizations led by Battelle and BPA. A portion of this project is led by Avista and the main goal of this is to add significant computer and communication intelligence to the electrical system in the town of Pullman, WA. Smart meters for all the customers with their requisite communication infrastructure have been installed together with an updated distribution automation system. The campus of Washington State University, the largest electricity customer in Pullman, will operate as a microgrid managing its own steam plant and captive generators as well as its various types of loads. Building automation systems are being installed to make this feasible. The main goal is to develop the methods and processes that will optimize and operate the electrical system in such a way that will make the consumption of electricity more reliable and efficient.

Michael Kintner-Meyer

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Energy storage: How much do we need? How much can we afford?

Energy storage systems, and in particular, batteries have received significant attention in the electricity industry as a potential game-changer that targets the increasing intermittency problem associated with the growing wind and solar technology contribution to the US generation mix. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has recently completed a study that estimated the potential market size of energy storage and the respective cost-points ($/kW and $/kWh incremental storage cost), at which storage can compete against other technologies. This presentation will provide an overview of the results of the national assessment.

Furthermore, a competitor to stationary energy storage, electric vehicle charging strategies will be discussed and how the emerging electric vehicle fleet can contribute as a grid resource to mitigating the intermittency problem. How electric vehicle charging strategies could be applied, the size of this emerging resource, and the implementation in a real vehicle will be presented as well.

Elliot Mainzer

Bonneville Power Administration

An overview of renewable and transmission integration

David Mills

Puget Sound Energy

PSE perspective on renewables integration

Laura Beane

Iberdrola Renewables

Market based solutions to transmission capacity and ancillary services

Curt Kirkeby

AVISTA

AVISTA development of a microgrid and the use of intentional islanding started in 2009

Eric Sortomme

Alstom Grid

Smart EV Charging

The talk focuses on the issues facing utilities with the roll out of large numbers of electric vehicles. A large potential benefit is the transfer of transportation fuel spending from the petroleum sector to the electric utility sector. The potential negative impacts on the system are discussed in the context of bulk energy supply issues and distribution system issues. Advanced charge control and vehicle-to-grid technologies can be used to mitigate these negative impacts as well as increase utility revenues from charging EVs. Several case studies highlight these benefits.

Tom Wilson

PCS Utilidata

Equipment, installation and volt / var case studies

Digital Signal Processing (DSP) is used in the electric power industry in protective relaying, power quality analysis and load forecasting.  The use of DSP can provide significant advantages when applied to Volt/VAR Optimization (VVO).   Among those advantages are highly scalable VVO systems, reduced tap operations as compared with non-VVO operation, the ability to adapt to system changes without the requirement of updating physical models, smaller compute power requirements and independence from the requirement to use load modeling.  DSP will be the enabling technology for full integration of VVO and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI).  The use of DSP also enables the use of VVO for energy conservation in industrial facilities with large motors where DSP is used to determine minimum voltage set point levels that will assure 5 nines probability that the voltage is always high enough that a synchronous motor will not pull out and a certain percentage of slip will never be exceeded in an induction machine. 

Robert Uluski

EPRI

Volt-VAR Control and Optimization (VVC)

Voltage optimization is becoming an integral part of the distribution control strategy in the smart grid. Initial indications indicate a number of benefits from optimizing the distribution voltage profile. For many years, voltage reduction has been used as a demand management function in times of heavy demand. More recent research has shown that this can be part of the daily operation of the distribution system for both demand management and energy reduction. In fact, it may be one of the most cost-effective energy conservation measures that can be implemented. Despite the benefit potential, there are unanswered questions about how to estimate the actual energy savings and demand reduction that can be expected for different types of systems and

Gordon Hayslip

Snohomish PUD

LED Street Lighting Systems

Snohomish Public Utility District owns and operates over 55,000 high pressure sodium (HPS) street and area lights. We are currently evaluating LED roadway fixtures, comparing their performance, energy savings and life-cycle costs against HPS lights. LED lights employ a completely different technology than conventional high intensity discharge (HID) lights and direct comparison of HID and LED light fixtures can be difficult. Fortunately industry standards are now available that specifically address the unique characteristics of LED light fixtures and these standards should guide the process of selecting and evaluating LED lights.

Vicki Marsten

SCL

Seattle City Light and LED Street Lighting–Case Study

Seattle City Light launched an LED Streetlight Application Assessment Project & Pilot Study in 2007 to evaluate LED luminaires for photometric performance, energy efficiency, economic performance, and the impact of the new lights on Seattle communities. This discussion will explain the pilot project findings and how these were used to develop a strategy for the conversion of City Lights 84,000 HPS streetlights to LED streetlights to make Seattle lighting system more energy efficient and better serve the needs of City residents. It will also discuss the major elements of this project and the progress made to date with the conversion of nearly 20,000 streetlights.

John Sell

Alstom

Will Odell

Snohomish PUD

Distribution Automation

Current electric distribution systems depend on intelligent field devices and control systems to maintain maximum efficiency, reliability and performance without compromising safety and protection of distribution assets. Snohomish PUD and Alstom Grid will discuss their partnership in installing a distribution automation demonstration project while implementing a distribution management system to provide active monitoring, control and optimization of the grid. This ARRA funded Smart Grid Investment Grant project requires the integration of automated equipment to multiple back office systems via a secure field area network. We will discuss the selection of devices, communication technologies, test lab, power flow analysis, integration of auto-restoration schemes (FISR), and energy delivery optimization

Rick Durst

Portland General Electric

Capacity, power quality and system design impacts of vehicle charging to the electric system