Research Channels Powerful Kansas Wind to Keep Electricity Running

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.k-state.edu/media/newsreleases/mar11/powergrid32111.html

Sources: Noel Schulz, 785-532-5600, [e-mail],
http://www.k-state.edu/media/mediaguide/bios/nschulzbio.html;
Caterina Scoglio, 785-532-4646, [e-mail];
and Sakshi Pahwa, [e-mail]
Video available. Download at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJPscGtlkxI
News release prepared by: Jennifer Torline, 785-532-0847, [e-mail]

Monday, March 21, 2011

RESEARCH CHANNELS POWERFUL KANSAS WIND TO KEEP ELECTRICITY RUNNING

MANHATTAN -- One of Kansas' most abundant natural resources may hold the key to preventing major power outages. A team of Kansas State University engineers is researching ways to use Kansas wind and other distributed energy sources to avoid cascading failures.

Sakshi Pahwa, doctoral student in electrical and computer engineering, India, explored the topic for her recently completed master’s project, "Distributed Sources and Islanding to Mitigate Cascading Failures in Power Grid Networks." The project was a winner at the recent Capitol Graduate Research Summit in Topeka.

…

The research looks at using distributed energy sources to avoid cascading failures in power grids. A cascading failure occurs when an interconnected part of a power system fails and then triggers successive parts to fail – like the one that happened in the Northeast Blackout of 2003, a power outage that affected 55 million people in the United States and Canada.

To prevent cascading failures researchers are investigating a technique called islanding, which works to minimize the impact of a power system fault to a small area. Islanding prevents this fault from affecting other areas and stops further disturbances in the network.

…

[DCKit]

1. Enron is going to pull their funding from KSU over this. nt

[damntexdem]

2. Drove through western Kansas and eastern Colorado last November and was amazed ...

at the increase in windmills out there. Now I know where a lot of those gigantic windmill blades are going that I see heading north from Texas on I35.

[kristopher]

3. Want to know more?

http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy03osti/34715.pdf

August 2003 • NREL/SR-560-34715

Report on Distributed Generation Penetration Study

1.1 Background Discussion
Traditional nonutility-generated power sources, such as emergency and standby power systems, have minimal interaction with the electric power system (EPS). As distributed generation (DG) hardware becomes more reliable and economically feasible, there is an increasing trend to interconnect those DG units with existing utilities to meet various energy needs and offer more service possibilities to customers and the host EPS.

Among these possibilities are:
• Standby/backup power to improve the availability and reliability of electric power
• Peak load shaving
• Combined heat and power
• Sales of power back to utilities or other users
• Renewable energy
• Power quality, such as reactive power compensation and voltage support
• Dynamic stability support.
This trend is fueled and accelerated by utility deregulation.

Safe and reliable operation of the power system will increasingly be influenced by distributed energy resources (DER). Penetration is a measure of the amount of DER compared with the total generation resource on a power system. In the broadest sense, this applies to the entire interconnected grid. However, the concept of local penetration is valuable, as well. A few megawatts of generation can represent a substantial penetration on a small system or the local portion of a large system. Further, penetration is not a static measure. A relatively small amount of installed DG might represent a high level of penetration when the system is at light load. A broad vision of DER includes widespread deployment of a range of new technologies. In that long-term view, the majority of attractive emerging DER technologies relies on power electronic inverters for connection to the power system. These technologies include fuel cells, photovoltaics, and microturbines. The first year of effort examining penetration focused on those technologies....