Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

We all vividly remember the devastation that Hurricane Irma brought to Florida in early September and Hurricane Harvey to Houston in late August of this year. The storms knocked down power lines, destroyed distribution sub-stations, and left millions of residents and businesses without power for weeks: "CBS News - More than a quarter-million customers are without power in Texas early Saturday after Hurricane Harvey made landfall. Utilities are reporting outages affecting more than 336,000 customers as of 3 p.m. ET. (August 26, 2017)." However, an interesting story has drawn attention: “POWER Magazine Microgrid System Keeps Houston Grocery Stores Open in Wake of Harvey (Aug. 29, 2017).” We have also read in the news that “On December 2015, a massive cyber attack in Ukraine left nearly a quarter-million people without power for a period from 1 to 6 hours.” Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews writes (May 8, 2017): “Distributed microgrid tech can secure the electrical grids at military bases to reduce the impact of cyberattacks, physical attacks from terrorists and natural disasters.” These headlines highlight two important issues: (1) How can we make our power system more resilient to extreme events, such as hurricanes or cyber attacks? and (2) how can we use microgrid technology to increase the resilience of our power system in these situations? The focus of this research proposal is to address the above questions through the innovative use of microgrid technologies. What exactly is a microgrid? A microgrid is a group of interconnected loads and distributed energy resources, within clearly defined electrical boundaries, that acts as a single controllable entity with respect to the grid. A microgrid can connect and disconnect from the grid to enable it to operate in either grid-connected or island-mode. (US DOE). The proposed research builds upon many years of experience of the applicant in the areas of microgrids, fault-tolerant control, and safety and reliability of engineering systems to address challenges in design, analysis, and testing of microgrids to increase the resilience of the power system under extreme circumstances. Since microgrids can connect and disconnect from the grid, they can provide much needed power to localized critical loads, even when the main grid has suffered wide-spread disruptions. The innovations of this research include effective identification of potential paths to deliver power to critical loads, enabling of controlled power transfers between phases or among multiple microgrids, and coordinative control of multiple microgrids during rapid onset grid-wide disruptions. Thus, the proposed research relates very closely to Defence and Security Target Areas on Intrinsic Resiliency to Cyber-Attack. Using the techniques developed, we can support critical infrastructure and military operations in the event of a cyberattack. The proposed research will train 7 HQPs.