Electrical grid

Summary

An electrical grid is an interconnected network for electricity delivery from producers to consumers. Electrical grids vary in size and can cover whole countries or continents. It consists of:

power stations: often located near energy and away from heavily populated areas
electrical substations to step voltage up or down
electric power transmission to carry power long distances
electric power distribution to individual customers, where voltage is stepped down again to the required service voltage(s).

Grids are nearly always synchronous, meaning all distribution areas operate with three phase alternating current (AC) frequencies synchronized (so that voltage swings occur at almost the same time). This allows transmission of AC power throughout the area, connecting a large number of electricity generators and consumers and potentially enabling more efficient electricity markets and redundant generation. The combined transmission and distribution network is part of electricit

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_grid

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A sensitivity analysis on the optimization of grid usage rule and tariff for network impact mitigation.

Emma Anne Elisabeth Nelissen

This report adds to findings concerning the impact of advanced electricity tariff structures on grid-connected hybrid photovoltaic-battery systems. A representative database of 1'608 buildings in the city of Rolle was clustered into 15 medoids. For these 15 medoids and for the years 2020 and 2040, five tariff designs such as real-time pricings, a capacity-based tariff, and a block-rate tariff were evaluated using a mixed-integer-linear programming optimisation. The capacity-based tariff was concluded to be the most dependent on the grid and resulted in no investment in PV capacity or batteries in the year 2020. With Switzerland's current 2050 energy plans, the block-rate tariff scenario was concluded to be the most adequate mainly due to its independence from the electricity grid. In 2040, the block-rate scenario had an average of 18kWh more battery capacity installation compared to all other tariff designs. Even though, PV curtailment was present in this scenario, it was concluded that curtailment could be seen as an opportunity to encourage storage and the renovation of the current grid infrastructure. These conclusions could provide insights for policy makers.

2019

Assessment of Commercial Building Lighting as a Frequency Regulation Resource

Alexandra Cameron Karpilow

This paper evaluates the potential for automated lighting control as a resource for frequency regulation of the electric grid system in the context of current energy policies, economic incentives, and technological trends. The growing prevalence of renewable energy has increased the need for ancillary services to maintain grid frequency and stability. While demand side resources like heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning systems, as well as water treatment plants are already evaluated as regulation service providers, the potential application to electrical lighting systems has largely been ignored. Yet, aggregations of lighting systems that are retrofitted with intelligent controls could conceivably contribute to frequency regulation services with little impact on user comfort. To further explore the feasibility of lighting potential, this paper explores (1) how lighting control systems are limited by visual comfort perception and acceptability, (2) how such limitations impact the performance of the lighting system as an frequency regulation resource, and (3) how the market potential of lighting systems as demand side resources compares in different regional transmission organizations. Finally, the impact of developing technologies on the application of lighting systems for frequency regulation is discussed.

2020

Peak load levelling through peak shaving and valley ﬁlling is need of the hour in the electricity grid network. A reserve plant or a large scale electric energy storage plant could be the way out to handle the variable load situations. Though the re- serve plants have its limitations and often increase the load on the transmission and grid system, rather than reducing the load during off peak hours. A novel technique of site-independent energy storage is studied in this thesis work, which do have more positives about balancing the electrical grid. While, proﬁtability of the energy stor- age is lie on very thin margins of peak and off peak hour spot electricity market price. The considered thermal storage operates in a heat-pump mode during the charg- ing period and in a thermal-engine mode during discharging period. The idea is to utilise the design concept to integrate with the district energy services, while com- peting with the conventional district services. The design modiﬁcations has been evaluated based on the efficiency performance and the a proﬁtability studyis performed.

2012