This quarterly newsletter highlights recent projects, partnerships, and resources from the Global Power System Transformation (G-PST) Consortium.
Supporting the Global Power System Transformation at Every Stage
In some ways, it doesn’t seem that long ago since we were sitting around a conference room table at EirGrid in October of 2019, discussing the formation of the G-PST, and in other ways it seems like an eternity! Since the subsequent meeting at Imperial College in London in February of 2020, a lot has happened. The Research Agenda has been established and posted for widespread sharing and feedback; a Research Repository has been created; the five pillars of G-PST all have established leadership teams with critical work underway; an official launch event was held on Earth Day in April of 2021 with participation from partners around the globe; G-PST participated in several events at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow in November of 2021, which helped raise our global profile; the governance structure has been established, and coordinated fundraising effort are underway with global partners.
Based on a quick survey of global events, the timing could not have been better. The magnitude and frequency of severe weather events related to climate change are being seen more clearly and taken more seriously every day. The war in Ukraine has accelerated the implementation of the energy transition in Europe; major corporations are accelerating their green energy purchases due to pressure from shareholders, employees, and customers. Individual country shares of renewable energy continue to grow annually, and new instantaneous penetration records are being set daily. The transition to electric vehicles is underway, with announcements of a timeline for the halt of the production and purchase of internal combustion engine vehicles happening regularly.
Things are moving in the right direction, but they are not moving quickly enough. We can do more, and across G-PST and particularly Pillar 1, we are committed to doing more to support the global power system transformation to clean energy, with no compromise to system reliability.
Charlie Smith
Executive Director, ESIG
Co-lead, GPST Pillar 1
Featured News
EirGrid Achieves 75% Variable Renewable Energy Generation Trial on Ireland Power System
EirGrid, the grid system operator for Ireland, alongside its partner SONI, the system operator for Northern Ireland, recently achieved a major decarbonization milestone by successfully operating Ireland’s electricity grid at between 70% and 75% variable renewable energy (VRE) for a total of 232 hours across an 11-month trial period. This trial demonstrates that up to three quarters of the electricity flowing on the Irish electricity grid at any point in time can now come from VRE sources.
Welcome 2022 Women in Power System Transformation Graduate Interns!
The 2022 Women in Power System Transformation graduate summer internships have officially begun. The Women in Power System Transformation initiative addresses educational and professional barriers to women’s representation and leadership in the power sector. The initiative sponsored the placement of three graduate women interns at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and three at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). Throughout the internships, these young women leaders will be learning hands-on skills by working closely with NREL and EPRI researchers on cutting-edge power systems analyses and clean energy integration activities.
Esbjerg Declaration Increases Offshore Wind and Green Hydrogen Ambitions for North Sea Countries
The prime ministers of Denmark, Germany, Holland, and Belgium signed the Esbjerg Declaration on May 18, 2022, announcing the countries’ collective commitment to install 65 gigawatts (GW) of offshore wind in the North Sea by 2030, and 150 GW by 2050. The declaration also set a target to deploy 20 GW of green hydrogen by 2050. The declaration marks a significant step change in the countries’ offshore wind ambitions and was spurred on by the need for Europe to reduce dependency on Russian oil and gas.
G-PST Supports Indonesia’s System Operator Through Comprehensive Virtual Training Series
Under the G-PST’s System Operator Technical Support Pillar (Pillar 2), over 25 experts from across the G-PST core team and founding system operator network joined a virtual training series to present on power system management and VRE integration topics to staff at Indonesia’s power system operator, PLN. The series helps to broadcast to PLN staff the innovative and modern ways in which utilities around the world are integrating higher penetrations of VRE, and topics were chosen based on PLN’s highest priority needs and demands. The training series began in April 2021 and has hosted nine installments so far.
Energy Systems Integration Group Hosts Grid-Forming Technology Conference
Progress is being made around the world in deploying grid-forming technology through pilot projects, mandatory and non-mandatory interconnection requirements, and regulatory incentives. To broaden the dialogue about what role grid-forming technology can play on current and future power systems, the G-PST’s Pillar 1 lead organization, the Energy Systems Integration Group, held a grid-forming technology conference in Denver, Colorado during the week of June 6, 2022.
Featured News
Meet Maria Nohemi
Maria Nohemi is the CEO of the Colombian system operator, XM, and is an electrical engineer with more than 25 years of experience in power systems, energy planning, and transactions in the Colombian wholesale energy market. As the XM leader, Maria Nohemi is promoting the energy transition in Colombia and collaborating with the G-PST to share XM’s experiences, improve competitiveness, develop capacities, and ensure an efficient and resilient energy system while maximizing the benefits of new technologies.
Announcements
Now Available! Explore the Control Center of the Future Assessment for Peru’s System Operator
The G-PST Consortium is proud to support system operator partners around the world, such as Peru’s Comité de Operación Económica del Sistema Interconectado Nacional (COES), with modernizing their systems and tools to manage greater shares of variable renewable energy. Two of our core team organizations, EPRI and NREL, worked with COES to develop an in-depth assessment of the optimal approaches for control center improvement that COES might consider to meet the demands of the future power system.
Explore the full-length copies of the assessment, in both Spanish and English.
Upcoming Events
Pillar 1 Webinar: Impedance Scan Tools for Stability Analysis of IBR Grids – June 30, 2022 – 4:00 p.m. EDT
Featured Speaker: Shahil Shah, Senior Engineer, NREL
About the Webinar: Dynamic stability is a major concern in operating power systems with high levels of inverter-based resources (IBRs). Dynamic stability problems in IBR grids manifest as oscillations or control interactions that are observed either locally between a few IBRs or span a wider network involving tens to hundreds of IBRs. It is quite challenging to evaluate the stability of IBR grids because of fast, complex, and non-standardized controls of IBRs as well as unavailability of their open-box models from vendors. This webinar will review impedance-based methods for stability analysis of IBR grids. It will also present a PSCAD-based impedance scan software tool and an impedance measurement system developed at NREL for analyzing the stability of IBR grids. Case studies to demonstrate the capabilities of these tools to answer questions such as “which IBRs are causing oscillations?” or “how much grid-forming capacity is needed in a system?” will be presented.
Pillar 1 Webinar: Wind and Solar Power Forecast Management – July 12, 2022 – 4:00 p.m. EDT
Featured Speaker: Nitika Mago, Manager, Electric Grid Operations, ERCOT
About the Webinar: As of May 31, 2022, ERCOT has integrated about 35,755 MW of wind and 11,669 MW of solar capacity on its grid. ERCOT currently receives both hourly and intra-hour 5-minute wind and solar forecasts from three different vendors and has built tools and processes to integrate these various forecasts into ERCOT’s Real Time operations and forward-looking studies. Since 2018, ERCOT has had a “pay-for-performance” payment structure with its wind forecast vendors that incentivizes improvements in forecast performance during hours that are critical to Real-Time operations. ERCOT has been continuously improving the design of its Ancillary Services (aka “operational reserves”) program including creating new analysis tools to better manage the challenges brought by uncertainty and variability of its wind and solar fleet. This webinar will provide a holistic review of ERCOT’s wind and solar power forecast management strategies including tools, procedures, and approaches that have been instituted or are in the process of being implemented within the next 12-18 months.
Resources
Visit the Resources page to explore our full resource library.
Watch our April – June 2022 webinars:
- Enhancing Women’s Participation in Southeast Asia’s Energy Transition
- Open-Source Power Systems Analysis Packages: Cross-package Coordination for System Planning
- Use of AI and Big Data in the Control Room
- IEEE 2800-2022 Update: New IEEE Interconnection Standard for Large-Scale Solar, Wind, and Energy Storage
- Inertia Monitoring
- Illustration of G-PST Teaching Material Through VSC-HVDC Example
- Project EDGE / DER Marketplace Demonstration