The iPower program for research and innovation co-funded by the Innovation Foundation has successfully shown live demonstrations of key end-to-end smart grid solutions. The demonstrated solutions enable demand resources in form of buildings, supermarket coolers and chillers to provide flexibility to a renewable-based power system and support the operation of the distribution grid, including management of grid congestions. The solutions including new flexibility services and market platforms have been developed in the iPower project.
The demonstrations were presented live at an iPower conference 18-19 November 2014 held and organized by DTU Electrical Engineering, Center for Electric Power and Energy at Risø. The venue was the SYSLAB laboratory at DTU’s Risø Campus, which is part of the PowerLabDK experimental platform. The laboratory was partly cleared of machinery and turned into a conference and demonstration center to be able to welcome the 130 attendants from the industry and universities in Denmark and abroad. SYSLAB is used for research and testing of control concepts and strategies for power systems with distributed control and was employed in the demonstrations at the conference.
In iPower the complete chain of demand response is covered – from the user to impact on society. iPower has strong focus on taking the research results further towards the market. In the light of this, the conference paid particular attention to implementation of the technologies.
The conference presented a number of interesting perspectives along with the demonstrations. Director of the Energy Agency, Morten Bæk presented the Danish perspective on smart grid, and David Hill of OpenEnergi in the UK introduced the demand response market in the UK and gave the audience insight into the way OpenEnergi operates in the market. Dr. Mathias Uslar, OFFIS from Germany presented the results of an extensive German study on future distribution networks and how smart grids can be used to reduce the future distribution network costs. Other topics were domestic consumer behavior and interfaces between aggregator and consumer.
The demonstrations showed how individual houses and heating systems can be controlled and how the houses can be integrated into a market using residential test houses at DTU’s Risø Campus and Grundfos in Bjerringbro. It was also demonstrated how an optimal aggregator developed by Aalborg University can control a chiller installed at Grundfos and a supermarket refrigeration unit installed at Danfoss. Insero Software has developed a similar aggregator of household consumption that is currently being demonstrated at their Live Lab at Stenderup, where it aggregates heat pumps and electric vehicles. It was demonstrated how the aggregator integrates with the software infrastructure FLECH that enables Distribution System Operators and aggregators to interact in a market-based way.
Please find more information about iPower and the conference at www.ipower-net.dk, where also presentations and video recordings from the conference are available.