NSF Grant to Fund Research on Power Distribution

(Brookhaven National Lab)

A team of engineers and computer scientists at Kansas State University in Manhattan have received a $1.1 grant to research better ways of distributing solar power to homes and businesses. The grant, funded by National Science Foundation’s Cyber-Physical Systems program, aims to give utilities generating solar energy better tools for managing and distributing this power.

“We are looking at ways in which we can provide fast control to be able to maintain balance between loads and generation to keep the system stable,” says Anil Pahwa, professor of electrical and computer engineering and the project’s principal investigator.

The researchers want to make distribution systems more flexible by addressing events that can cause complications with solar panels, such as when clouds arrive and energy from solar panels can drop suddenly. At that point, power has to come from the grid, which is not always a smooth transition. The team is also looking at ways to improve electrical flow if homes are disconnected from the grid by natural causes — such as earthquakes, tornadoes or hurricanes — or a human or technical failure.

Electrical engineering faculty expect to develop intelligent algorithms for the project, while computing and information sciences faculty will work on integrating the various sub-systems through an architecture that supports adaptive behavior.

The four-year project is expected to help utilities meet the need for distribution systems that can both adapt to normal day-to-day needs as well as react to anomalous situations. The distribution architecture developed by the project aims to be capable of optimizing performance and maintaining the system during normal and minor events, such as cloud cover that reduces the output from solar panels.

At the same time, the architecture has to operate during emergencies, such as outages caused by natural events, or even terrorist attacks. To address complications from being disconnected from the grid, for example, the researchers are developing a system that can monitor what is going on in the power grid and then work with other agents to divide up roles and work as a team should the need arise.

While the researchers are focusing their efforts on solar panels, the infrastructure that they create has applications for a variety of renewable energy sources. “One of the goals of the smart grid is to be able to integrate more renewable energy sources into the system and empower customers,” says Pahwa.

Read more: NSF, Energy Dept to Fund Power Grid Research Center

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