Lead Performer: Oak Ridge National Laboratory – Oak Ridge, TN
Partners:
-- Southern Company – Atlanta, GA
-- Alabama Power – Birmingham, AL
-- Georgia Power – Atlanta, GA
-- Carrier – San Leandro, CA
-- Rheem – Atlanta, GA
DOE Total Funding: $2,000,000
Cost Share: $380,000
Project Term: March 2016 – September 30, 2021
Funding Opportunity: Lab Award
Project Objective
In direct partnership with the Energy Department’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability and utilities, this project aims to validate a “smart,” neighborhood-level, buildings-to-grid integration strategy utilizing the VOLTTRON platform. The project team will deploy and compare two transactive microgrid approaches—including various business and use cases—to distributed power generation and storage with building level energy management. This management of complex systems is enabled through the integration of the VOLTTRON-based transactive controls platform: one approach will focus on aggregate renewable generation and distributed energy storage at the neighborhood level through community scale storage, solar photovoltaic (PV), and emergency distributed generation (i.e. Community Scale Microgrid); the second approach will focus on utilizing a fully distributed approach with rooftop solar PV and home energy storage (i.e. a Neighborhood of Home Scale Microgrids). This project will evaluate the business cases to the consumer and to the utility for microgrid deployments within a utility service area—what happens when consumers become producers (e.g. prosumers) with the utility’s help?
Project Impact
Based on weather, solar irradiance, and load forecasts coupled with utility needs and factors such as time of use pricing, this project’s transactive microgrid approaches to distributed power generation and storage will optimize battery storage, generation, and “virtual storage” to minimize overall system costs for both homeowners and utilities and improve reliability for all customers served.
Contacts
DOE Technology Manager: Joe Hagerman
Principal Investigator: Teja Kuruganti, ORNL