PES Seminar: Siemens Technology presents resilient and sustainable energy systems

Dear colleagues,

This is a kick-off event for IEEE Power & Energy Society Princeton/Central Jersey Section Chapter after many years of silence.

In this event, we have invited Dr. Xiaofan Wu and Dr. Ulrich Muenz from Siemens Technology to discuss about resilient and sustainable energy systems. Further details about the presentation and presenter bios can be found in the attachment.

We target inviting more speakers in the power/energy industry to talk about the unique challenges and opportunities in the future. Please stay tuned.

Best regards,
Yubo Wang
Chapter Chair, IEEE PES Princeton/Central Jersey Section
Staff Research Scientist, Siemens Technology

Speaker(s): Xiaofan Wu, Ulrich Muenz

Agenda:
Siemens Technology’s North America R&D Hub in Princeton NJ is spearheading innovation in resiliency and sustainability for energy systems. The main challenges of today’s power system are to mitigate climate change and adapt to more frequent and intense natural disasters, as well as to control and optimize the increasing inverter-based renewable generation. In this seminar, we will share how Siemens Technology drives innovation in this field by developing a cleaner, more reliable and more resilient energy system.

First, we will provide an overview of Siemens Technology’s [Advanced Microgrid Research and Demonstration Testbed](https://new.siemens.com/us/en/company/topic-areas/distributed-energy-systems/princeton-resilient-campus.html) – the Princeton Island Grid Living Lab. The living lab serves as a platform for research, development, and demonstration of new technologies for building management and microgrid operation. It also addresses the business need of lower CO2 footprint and energy cost and maintain a reliable and sustainable power delivery in case of an emergency. In addition, Princeton Island Grid provides a co-creation space for both Siemens internal and external partners to deploy innovative microgrid solutions.

Second, we will give an overview of recent advances to increase resilience in distribution systems after natural disasters. The main challenge of natural disasters is that many power system components are affected within a very short timeframe, which is referred to as N-k contingencies. This large number of component outages leads to multiple blackouts in distribution systems. We present two different technologies how to re-supply loads after such blackouts: distribution system reconfiguration and autonomous blackstart. Distribution system reconfiguration uses normally open switches between distribution feeders to re-supply loads from healthy feeders. The main challenge is how to select the best configuration under a large number of normally open switches. We show the effectiveness of our approach using historic outages from a utility in the Rocky Mountains. Autonomous blackstart uses Distributed Energy Resources to blackstart subsections of a distribution system bottom-up, i.e. without connection to the bulk system. We show first results using simulations and our hardware testbed. Both technologies are developed within the US DOE-funded project AUtonomous and Resilient Operation of energy system with RenewAbles (AURORA) led by Siemens Technology.

Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/308259