Fig-1. FIU PV Integrated Power Plant Set up
This project is supported by NextEra Energy. NextEra Energy/Florida Power & Light (FPL) has the largest renewable energy resources deployment in the world. The project is developing an infrastructure for an AI-based renewable microgrid and Virtual power plant (VPP) on FIU Engineering campus in collaboration with EPS group. This project looks into two major aspects- a) internal component reliability performance & their life expectancy; b) the grid services provided by a VPP. Typical distributed renewable energy resources have little or no inertia. This makes their ability to act like a traditional power generating unit with a high level of rigidity such as that of synchronous generators difficult to achieve. This project is developed to enable hybrid renewable sources such as PV systems plus batteries and backup synchronous generators to act as a cohesive system. The newly developed infrastructure constitutes of a combination of 1.4MW utility scale PV system, 3MW-12MWHr Storage, 0.5 MW Diesel generator. The FIU system researches improved security of supply, dynamic response to abnormal situations in the grid (such as frequency variations, voltage swell and sags), improved controllability and dispatchability, grid forming, and grid following capability. The developed system incorporates an advanced Energy Management System that significantly enhances the energy conversion performance. Further, the developed HESS enables on-demand dispatchability for the 1.4MW PV system and provides Virtual-Inertial response while enhancing the grid stability. Fig 2 shows the grid tied 1.4MW solar array on Engineering Campus of FIU.
Fig 2. A grid-tied 1.4MW solar array on Engineering Campus of FIU which will be integrated with a Hybrid Energy Storage System (HESS) for an integrated single PGU plant comprising of a 3MW-12MWh Li-ion battery and a Diesel generator.
Some of the noteworthy publications related to this project are listed below.
- Anzalchi, Arash, “Advanced Solutions for Renewable Energy Integration into the Grid Addressing Intermittencies, Harmonics and Inertial Response” (2017). FIU Electronic Thesis and Dissertations. 3506. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/3506
- Anzalchi and A. Sarwat, “Power Quality Monitoring of a 1.1 MW Photovoltaic Power Plant,” 2018 IEEE Power & Energy Society General Meeting (PESGM), Portland, OR, 2018, pp. 1-5, doi: 10.1109/PESGM.2018.8586481.
- Sundararajan, Aditya, and Arif I. Sarwat. “Evaluation of missing data imputation methods for an enhanced distributed PV generation prediction.” In Proceedings of the Future Technologies Conference, pp. 590-609. Springer, Cham, 2019.
- Anzalchi, A. Sundararajan, A. Moghadasi and A. Sarwat, “Power quality and voltage profile analyses of high penetration grid-tied photovoltaics: A case study,” 2017 IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting, Cincinnati, OH, 2017, pp. 1-8, doi: 10.1109/IAS.2017.8101854.
- Sundararajan, Aditya, and Arif I. Sarwat. “Hybrid data-model method to improve generation estimation and performance assessment of grid-tied PV: a case study.” IET Renewable Power Generation 13, no. 13 (2019): 2480-2490.
- Anzalchi, Arash, Masood Moghaddami, Amir Moghaddasi, Arif I. Sarwat, and Akshay K. Rathore. “A new topology of higher order power filter for single-phase grid-tied voltage-source inverters.” IEEE transactions on industrial electronics 63, no. 12 (2016): 7511-7522.
- Moghadasi, A. Sargolzaei, A. Anzalchi, M. Moghaddami, A. Khalilnejad and A. Sarwat, “A Model Predictive Power Control Approach for a Three-Phase Single-Stage Grid-Tied PV Module-Integrated Converter,” in IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, vol. 54, no. 2, pp. 1823-1831, March-April 2018
- Anzalchi, Arash, Masood Moghaddami, Amir Moghadasi, Maneli Malek Pour, and Arif I. Sarwat. “Design and analysis of a higher order power filter for grid-connected renewable energy systems.” IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications 53, no. 5 (2017): 4149-4161.
- Jafari, Mohamadsaleh, Temitayo O. Olowu, and Arif I. Sarwat. “Optimal smart inverters volt-var curve selection with a multi-objective volt-var optimization using evolutionary algorithm approach.” In 2018 North American Power Symposium (NAPS), pp. 1-6. IEEE, 2018.