Intelligent Electrification

To combat climate change and achieve decarbonization goals globally, electric power systems must integrate terawatts of variable renewable generation. Reliably integrating these clean energy resources will require vast electrification and efficiency efforts that redirect energy consumption in transportation, heating, and cooling towards clean, efficient electric demand. However, we must enhance electrification efforts by coordinating millions of new and retro-fitted connected, electric loads and other distributed energy resources. This capability for coordination allows us to reconsider the static nature of today’s efficiency programs and enable intelligent shaping (and re-shaping) of electric demand based on various market, grid, and environmental signals. To realize a vision of flexible demand that underpins intelligent electrification, we need new, scalable control and optimization approaches for coordination and effective DER cyber-physical architectures for cyber-secure information management. Since there is no free lunch, flexible demand is constrained by the devices’ ability to flex demand – both in terms of duration (MWh) and magnitude (MW) of deferred demand, which defines a battery-like characterization of flexible demand. Thus, intelligent electrification represents a complex interaction between deploying electric loads at scale, leveraging cheap communications for coordination, turning data into actionable information, enabling responsiveness with distributed control and optimization, and interfacing with traditional and upcoming markets and grid services.

Active Committees/Task Forces of Interest

To learn more & get involved, please check out the IEEE PES Smart Buildings, Loads & Customer Systems (SBLCS) Committee website.

Loads Subcommittee Task Force on “Behind-The-Meter Distributed Energy Resources: Estimation, Uncertainty Quantification, and Control” (Chair: Junbo Zhao).

Technical Reports & Applicable Papers or Presentations
IEEE Xplore Papers:
IEEE PES Open Access Journal of Power and Energy (OAJPE) Articles:
Publications
Electrification Magazine Articles:
Power & Energy Magazine (P&E) Articles:
Other Available Material
Grid forming capability for HVDC and FACTS: definitions and applications, IEEE PES General Meeting 2021 (Transmission and Distribution). Grid forming capability is at present being considered as a key feature for the future generation of converters to enable a higher penetration of renewables in future power systems with a lower system inertia coming from conventional generation employing synchronous machines. This panel session discusses the needs for grid forming capability from converters, with the focus on HVDC and FACTS, and the consequences of particular choices in controls. Different proposals from vendors and system operators alike will be discussed.
Webinars:
Panels: