ComEd Grid Labs-Why the Power Sector Needs Advanced Labs
The severity and frequency of severe weather events has risen in recent years due to climate change, while cyber-attacks have also become more of a threat as technological advances threaten to outpace cyber security. Stakeholders have recognized the imperative nature of supplying sustainable, resilient power to every community. The power industry, and particularly advanced utilities have been working tirelessly to ensure the resiliency of the power grid, and to lead the transformation into grid of the future. Labs play a particularly important role in this transformation as will enable an accurate and expedited system modeling and analysis. The paper discusses ComEd’s efforts, as the largest electric utility in the state of Illinois serving more than 4 million customers, to build and leverage advanced labs in designing the grid of the future.
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Operational Security in 100% Inverter-Based Power Systems: Experiences from Hawai‘i
The integration of renewable generation in electrical power systems is exponentially increasing for multiple reasons. First, a fast decarbonization of the electrical energy system is a critical milestone to slow climate change and facilitate the decarbonization of other energy sectors, such as transportation and heat. Second, renewable generation from wind and solar have become much cheaper compared to conventional sources like gas, coal, and nuclear. Third, renewable generation is in many cases decentralized, which increases the resilience of the energy system, for example, in the face of natural disasters.
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Hydrogen-Powered Aircraft: Hydrogen-Electric Hybrid Propulsion for Aviation
The ever-increasing demand for passenger air travel means unprecedented aircraft market growth in the coming decades. However, large airline fleets lead to serious environmental concerns. A clear goal was set during the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26): securing global net-zero emissions by midcentury while keeping 1.5 °C of temperature rise within reach. Hydrogen (H 2 ) propulsion technology provides one of the most promising opportunities to meet this target and decarbonize global aviation. Thus, this article reviews and collates state-of-the-art research related to H 2 –electric hybrid aircraft. After introducing the potential benefits of H 2 propulsion, fuel cell (FC) auxiliary power in airplanes and H 2 FC-powered aircraft are discussed.
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Strengthening Transmission System Resilience Against Extreme Weather Events by Undergrounding Selected Lines
Natural disasters, such as extreme weather events (EWEs), can cause significant damage to power systems. In fact, it is expected that the intensity and frequency of EWEs will increase the next years due to climate change, making power system resilience enhancement necessary. This paper proposes a transmission resilience planning solution by determining the lines to be placed underground in order to minimize load shedding in the most cost-efficient way taking into account historical EWEs (HEWEs).
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Lighting a Reliable Path to 100% Clean Electricity: Evolving Resource Adequacy Practices for a Decarbonizing Grid
It is the year 2045 in the carbon-neutral southwestern United States. While summer heatwaves have increased in frequency and intensity because of climate change, the region’s abundant solar generation produces tremendous amounts of low-cost energy on hot summer days. This energy not only serves daytime loads but it also charges an enormous fleet of batteries that, aided by wind and geothermal power, discharge overnight to effectively eliminate summertime electric reliability concerns.
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Mobile and Portable De-Icing Devices for Enhancing the Distribution System Resilience Against Ice Storms: Preventive Strategies for Damage Control
Climate change has reportedly increased the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events such as heatwaves, heavy rains, hurricanes, tornados, flood, fire, and ice storms. Ice storms are considered one of the most severe natural disasters that can disrupt people’s daily lives and incur infrastructural damages. Ice storms are the leading cause of large-scale power outages in the United States and elsewhere during the winter season. The damage caused by ice storms can easily result in major power outages, blackouts, and at times shut down entire metropolitan areas.
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Utility-Scale Shared Energy Storage: Business Models for Utility-Scale Shared Energy Storage Systems and Customer Participation
Due to climate change, supply scarcity, and society’s desire to expand access to electricity and improve energy-system resilience, there has been an increasing demand to invest in and use renewable energy sources (RESs) that are environmentally friendly, efficient, sustainable, and affordable. This has diversified and decentralized energy sources and increased their penetration.
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Multi-Energy Microgrids: Designing, Operation Under New Business Models, and Engineering Practices in China
With the global awareness of climate change and environmental problems, major powers over the world have set their goals to contribute to a low-carbon society. China announced the target of “carbon peak and carbon neutrality,” requiring a cleaner, carbonfree, economic, and sustainable energy system. To this end, there are two promising approaches. The first is to increase the penetration of clean energies, such as wind power and photovoltaics (PVs). This can reduce carbon emissions effectively.
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Data-Driven Classifier for Extreme Outage Prediction Based On Bayes Decision Theory
The growing concern over catastrophic weather events, mostly as a direct result of climate changes, has underscored the need for expanding traditional power system contingency analyses to handle the associated risks of extreme power outages. To enable power system operators to make timely decisions when facing extreme events, we explore in this paper the viability of a classifier which uses the machine learning approach based on the Bayes decision theory as a means of predicting power system component outages.
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Enable a Carbon Efficient Power Grid via Minimal Uplift Payments
The COVID-19 has slowed down global economic growth. Meanwhile, it also significantly cuts the global carbon emission, which provides a golden opportunity for the whole world to combat the climate change together. While the former policies (e.g., the CAFE standards, renewable portfolio standards, etc.) have reduced certain level of fossil fuel consumption, the most effective measures (such as carbon tax, cap-and-trade programs) are still far from ready for global implementation. This paper investigates an alternative way to achieve a more carbon efficient power grid using the uplift payment scheme.
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