Research seminar "Smart Grid Improves the Value of Distributed Generation"

 

While central station electric power plants have long provided the bulk of electricity in all industrialized and most developing countries, the traditional need for reliability of electricity supply is now being supplemented by the need for security and environmental sustainability. As many developing countries begin to industrialize to provide jobs and better living conditions to its citizens, the requirements for reliable, secure and environmentally sustainable supply of electricity becomes paramount. While fossil fuels have been the primary sources of electricity for the last one hundred years, their cost, uneven global distribution and global warming potential are encouraging world leaders to look for alternatives in renewable solar resources, which are distributed. But distributed generation sources have their own challenges - primarily intermittency.  Many believe that the smart grid – due to its inherent communication, sensing and control capabilities – will have the ability to manage the load, storage and generation assets in the power grid to enable a large scale integration of distributed generation.

A smart grid will look more like the Internet, where information about the state of the grid and its components can be exchanged quickly over long distances and diverse networks. This will  allow the grid integration of sustainable energy sources, such as wind, solar, off-shore electricity, etc. for smoother system operation. But in order for this to be possible, the electric utility will have to evolve and change their ways of operation to become an intelligent provider of these services. This lecture introduces the operational characteristics of renewable energy sources, and various aspects of the smart grid  - technology, standards, regulations and data security – which are needed to effectively integrate these sources of electricity into the grid. This lecture also addresses the interplay among distributed generation and storage, conventional generation and demand response to provide an efficient operational strategy in the context of the smart grid.

 

 

Biography of the author:

 

Professor Saifur Rahman is the founding director of the Advanced Research Institute (www.ari.vt.edu) at Virginia Tech where he is the Joseph R. Loring professor of electrical and computer engineering. He also directs the Center for Energy and the Global Environment (www.ceage.vt.edu). He is a Fellow of the IEEE.  He is the founding editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Energy. He is a vice president of the IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) and a member-at-large of the IEEE-USA Energy Policy Committee. Currently he is serving as the chair of the US Naitonal Science Foundation Advisory Committee for International Science and Engineering. He is a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE PES, and has lectured on smart grid, energy efficient lighting solutions, renewable energy, demand  response, distributed generation and critical infrastructure protection topics in over 30 countries on all six continents.

He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech in 1978. His industry and government experience includes work with the Tokyo Electric Power Company in Japan, the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, Progress Energy, and consultancy for the World Bank, the United Nations, US Agency for the International Development and the Asian Development Bank.