# Presentation: 925584

## Pacific Northwest Demonstration Projects

**Carl Imhoff**
**Pacific NW National Laboratory**

**Information technology will **_**profoundly**_** transform the planning and operation of the power grid ...**

**Non-Wires Solutions Round Table**
**Portland, OR**
**March 15, 2006**

**Notes:**
GridWise:  Bringing Energy into the Information Age

GridWise is a vision for the future of the power grid, shared by a new U.S. Department of Energy program initiative and an industry alliance.

They share a common vision that Information Technology (IT) will profoundly transform the planning and operation of the power grid ...
from central generation down to customer appliances and equipment ...
into a collaborative network filled with information and a myriad of market-based opportunities ...

Advanced information technology has changed so much in our society ...
the way we do business, communications, entertainment and education ...
but has not yet had similar impact on our energy systems.  This is about to change.

This will enable distributed, real-time markets and control to integrate ...
the traditional elements of supply and demand, transmission and distribution ...
with new technologies such as distributed generation, energy storage, and customer load management.

The U.S. DOE and the GridWise industry Alliance have jointly declared their intention to work together to bring about this transformation sooner, with more impact and greater public good.

## Pacific NW GridWiseTM Testbed Projects

**Pacific NW GridWise****TM**** Testbed Projects**

## Olympic Peninsula GridWise Demonstration

**Olympic Peninsula GridWise Demonstration**

**$**

**MW**

- Mason 3 & Clallam PUDs
- n = 200, 0.8 MW DR

- Sequim Marine Sciences Lab,
- 0.3 MW DR
- 0.5 MW DG

- Port Angeles Water
- Supply District,
- 0.9 MW DR
- 0.9 MW DG, parallel

**Market**

- Internet broadband
- communications

## Testing Market-based Customer Incentives

- Fixed

- CPP/TOD

- Real-
- Time

- Contract
- Offers

- Contract
- Accepted

- Power Price

- Load Behavior

**Testing Market-based Customer Incentives**

- Customer contract choice

- Virtual distribution feeder (in software) as if all resources co-located on a single feeder

- Real-time (5-min.) market clearing ─ real cash deposits & shadow billing

- Real-time & historical display of resources, costs, prices

## Grid FriendlyTM Appliance Demonstration

**Grid Friendly****TM**** Appliance ****Demonstration**

- Apply autonomous GFA under frequency curtailment response to 200 appliances in 150 residences
- 150 Whirlpool/Sears dryers
- 50 water heaters
- Assess performance through correlation with frequency events
- Event log & load data collection (Invensys)
- Assess consumer acceptance – Whirlpool post-survey
- Perform preliminary assessments of costs and benefits

**Notes:**
Now, I am going to give some specific examples of technologies that will play a part in bringing about the changes envisioned by GridWise.

The first example is Grid-FriendlyTM Appliances (Pass Around Chip)
This is a plot of the fluctuations in the 60-Hz frequency of the power grid in various places in New York State during the August 14, 2003 blackout.
You can see that the normal (U.S.) 60-Hz frequency, which is normally maintained by the grid operators within very strict limits (+0.03 Hz) began to oscillate wildly.
Trajectory 1 is rapidly heading toward zero (the horizontal axis time scale here is seconds) – this is the area of the blackout, including New York City.
The areas in Trajectory 2 shows large positive and negative excursions from normal.
When the grid’s frequency deviates from normal, it is a sign of serious trouble.
If a power plant suddenly drops off line unexpectedly, or a major transmission corridor goes out of service, suddenly there is not enough power available to meet demand.
When this happens, all the generators rotating in synch slow down, drawing power out of the momentum all that rotating machinery to make up the deficit.
This is just like you car slowing down as it starts up a hill, until you push down on the gas pedal to get more power
The operators must bring on more power plants to make up the difference, and it takes at least 30 seconds and sometimes 30 minutes to do this.
The oscillations in trajectory two occurred because northern New York, which had actually been exporting power eastward toward Ohio when the blackout occurred, was cut off and suddenly had too much power.
So, the grid there sped up, which caused some power plants there to trip off, which caused whole cities to trip off, with the ensuing wild swings in frequency.
In the Western U.S., for example, these kinds of crisis are a daily occurrence, with a serious event weekly.
It is a tribute to the resiliency of the grid and the skill of our operators that these almost never result in a major blackout.
But, every once in a while, one cascades out of control with obviously devastating consequences.

Some Department of Energy researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have developed a credit-card sized controller that senses frequency excursions and can turn off appliances and equipment momentarily to rescue the grid.
These would be built into “white-goods” appliances (washers, dryers, dishwashers, water heaters) and air conditioners at the factory.
They would autonomously, recognize a disturbance and turn off these appliances for short periods – 2-5 minutes – to give the grid operators time to react to a crisis and prevent it from spinning out of control. 
By turning appliances off based on the deviation and rate of change of frequency, we can create a powerful “safety net” under the grid.
No communication system is required!  We can do this today, at low cost.
In the U.S. these appliances represent about 20% of electric demand.  
If we get the controllers built into every appliance, we can turn off up to 20% of demand, and do that in half a second, instead of waiting tens or hundreds of seconds to get power plants up to speed.

Note that these appliances all cycle on and off or from one mode to another during normal operation.
So the home occupants will not think it unusual for them to turn on or off (note we are NOT talking about lights, TVs, computers, etc.)
By installing the controllers at the factory, we can control selected processes to make their operation even less obtrusive.
For example, in a refrigerator we can turn off the compressor that uses almost all the power, but leave the light on in case someone opens the door.
Or, we can leave the clothes tumbling in the dryer but turn off the heating element.

These controllers will be cheap.  We’ve had 100 of them built, by hand, for $10 each.
In mass production, shrunk to a microchip, they may be $2-3 each.
By installing them at the factory, we take advantage of mass production.
We are working to demonstrate them in the field to establish the value proposition so the grid operators will recognize this resource as equivalent to, and even better than, spinning reserves.
Then we can get the utilities to pay the appliance manufacturers the cost of installing them in every appliance sold.
This reduces the inventory of power plants needed for backup, freeing them to sell power on the open market and reduce prices.

Some of the research we are conducting is focused on the “ramp rate” at which we turn off the appliances.
If they all went off at once, this might be too much shock the grid as badly as the power plant did to begin with.
So, we create a random delay for turning off each appliance, giving the grid a chance to stabilize before we turn off the next group.
We can even program resistive elements in the appliances to turn on momentarily to absorb the excess power when the frequency is high.
Of course, we also randomize their restart after the crisis passes to avoid the rebound effect that would occur if they all came back on at once.
We can use this same function to ease cold load pickup (“blackstart”) after an outage, preventing all the appliances from coming back on at once, which greatly complicates recovery.

In the process, we have transformed ordinary appliances from being part of the problem to being part of the solution – becoming partners in the operation of the power grid.
The primary microchip is what operates your cell phone.  It’s got plenty of processing power to do lots of other things.  
Maybe keep an inventory of what’s in the refrigerator, for example.
So, we have taken an appliance that was previously “dumb” and made it “smart.”
This can then form the first step in a broader transformation.
We can do simple things, like not defrost your refrigerator during times of peak demand.  
Defrost represents about 7% of refrigerator consumption in the U.S., by the time you melt the frost and cool the refrigerator back down.
It occurs at random times, so 7% of refrigerator consumption at any time is due to defrost – including during peak demand periods.
Why do they do this?  Because they are too dumb to know what time it is.  This is low hanging fruit!
We also have a rudimentary emergency management system for a longer-term crisis.  
Today we have a “meat cleaver” method of managing the grid – either everyone has power for everything, or no one has any power for anything.
In a rolling blackout, there is no power for traffic lights, street lights, water and sewage, gasoline pumping, communications ... important things!
It’s the 21st Century! We can do better than that!
If we arrange different types of appliances to turn off at slightly different frequencies, in order from least important (air conditioners?) to most critical (refrigerators?) ...
By intentionally turning down the grid frequency, the grid operators can turn off whole end uses, one at a time, until demand matches available supply.
And, again, no communication system is required!

But, thinking about the long term transformation GridWise envisions, now that we have a brain on board, there are many other things we can do.
By enabling two-way communications with appliances, wireless or power line carrier, we can then begin to negotiate with them to reduce demand when prices are high.
This is where the real value in increasing asset utilization and reducing need for new infrastructure lies.
Then, in the event of a serious long term crisis, we can also turn off selected end uses, or ration power and allow customers to trade their rations, to help manage the situation.
The possibilities are endless.

## GridWise Testbed Project

|  | Website Inquiries | Qualified | Packets Mailed | Packets Returned | Meters Installed | Invensys Equipment
Installed [functional] / Target | Dryers Installed / Target |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Gresham, OR | 112 | 79 | 79 | 72 | N/A | 45 [35] / 50 | 50 / 50 |
| Yakima, WA | 118 | 65 | 65 | 58 | N/A | 28 [26] / 50 | 40 / 50 |
| Olympic Peninsula, WA | 297 | 126 | 126 | 96 | 59 / 39
(Clallam/PA) | 69 [49] / 100 | ~26 / 50 |

**GridWise Testbed Project**
**Recruitment and Installation Progress***

- * as of March 7, 2006

- IBM distributed control system delivered and installed
- Invensys modules modified and delivered
- Market, billing, and customer control systems tested and integrated
- Full integration testing in progress

## Slides from here are just static versions of slide 2.  Use these instead if you are printing the presentation

## Olympic Peninsula GridWise Demonstration

**$**

**MW**

**Market**

## Olympic Peninsula GridWise Demonstration

**$**

**MW**

- Mason 3 & Clallam PUDs
- n = 200, 0.8 MW DR

- Sequim Marine Sciences Lab,
- 0.3 MW DR
- 0.5 MW DG

- Port Angeles Water
- Supply District,
- 0.9 MW DR
- 0.9 MW DG, parallel

**Market**

## Olympic Peninsula GridWise Demonstration

**Olympic Peninsula GridWise Demonstration**

**$**

**MW**

**Market**

- Internet broadband
- communications