Undergraduate Seminar Talk Seminar
Thursday, March 23, 2017, 4:45pm, Physics 119
Elliott Wolf & Alex Woolf (Lineage Logistics)
CONVEX-OPTIMIZING THE POWER GRID
Abstract:- The addition of renewable energy sources, whose power production cannot be
scheduled, has created increasing gaps between instantaneous electricity
supply and electricity demand. Sometimes the grid is oversupplied with
energy, requiring zero-marginal-cost sources of power to be shut or energy
to be bled off of the grid. Other times there is insufficient electricity,
requiring high-marginal-cost sources of electricity to be switched on or
consumers to curtail their demand. The current state of the grid has led
various utilities and power consumers deploy capital-intensive energy
storage, such as lithium-ion batteries, to better-match grid supply with
grid demand.
We present a method to add large-scale energy storage to the power grid
using only sensors, software modifications to the control systems of large
industrial refrigeration systems, and mathematical optimization. Our talk
will address the required instrumentation, the physics necessary to
understand applicable thermal constraints, and numerical methods used to
determine a mathematically optimal-discharge schedule. We further discuss
the economics of the US power grid, "war stories"of doing complex
mathematics in a large industrial setting and the effects of various
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and California Public Utility
Commission on our efforts. [video]
Generated at 12:58am Friday, April 19, 2024 by Mcal. Top
* Reload
* Login