Power grid gets smart

Fraunhofer researchers explain how a mix of power resources can be used to save costs, reduce prices and make the electricity supply more reliable:

London – The last major blackout in Europe plunged about 10 million people into darkness: on 4 Nov, 2006 at 10:09 in the evening, when a high-voltage power line was disconnected in Emsland, Lower Saxony, setting off a chain reaction throughout the grid. Power was cut in parts of Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Austria and Spain, in some cases for two hours.

According to researchers from the Fraunhofer Energy Alliance, the solution to avoiding such blackouts lies in an intelligently managed power grid. This, it believes, would make it possible to reduce energy costs and encourage power users to help to spread the load on the network through a flexible system of real-time pricing.

In a trial project in Stutensee, near Karlsruhe, Fraunhofer has developed a network that is capable of accepting input from a larger number of distributed sources – mainly solar – thanks to intelligent control and management. The local power utility, MVV of Mannheim has confirmed that the peak load has been reduced by 35%.

“The power management system serving the community of around 100 households prevents peaks from occurring at the medium-high voltage level of the grid,” explains Thomas Schlegl, who heads the Fraunhofer Energy Alliance. The intelligent control system is built around a set of algorithms that provide scope for the network to adapt to demand – it takes into account how much power is being fed into the network at different points and how much is being consumed.

Another local project, led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems, involves sending a text message to alert users at times when a generous amount of solar energy is being produced. Anyone who responded to this call to smooth out peaks in energy consumption was rewarded with a financial incentive.

To make such offers, utilities need a sophisticated electronic communication system, so the Fraunhofer Energy Alliance has made energy management one of the focuses of its work. “Such systems enable the various distributed power producers in a region to be linked together to form a virtual centralised power plant,” Schlegl comments.

Power management is one way of using energy resources more efficiently. But how can power producers test new systems before they go online?

At the Hannover Fair 16-20 April, the Fraunhofer Applications Center for Systems Technology AST and the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT will be presenting a new laboratory that they are in the process of building up, where power grids and the concepts used to manage them can be simulated as a means of optimizing the algorithms on which they are based.

To improve the control of low-voltage power distribution networks, the ISE has teamed up with a number of European partners to draw up the concept for a Power Flow and Power Quality Management System (PoMS). This system can help to integrate the growing number of distributed generation sites into the existing power grid and manage them there. Power management can be optimized on the basis of a wide variety of criteria, including minimizing operating costs, reducing the need for surplus capacity to meet peaks in demand, and minimising the consumption of primary energy sources.

The deregulation of the energy market has led to radical changes that confront grid operators with increasingly complex challenges. The research teams at the Fraunhofer Applications Center for Systems Technology can provide flexible, automated solutions for power management and related data communication needs – to support power producers, grid operators and their sales and marketing departments.