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FORINFRA-Nasj.sats. forskn.infrastrukt

National Smart Grid Laboratory & Demonstration Platform

Awarded: NOK 28.6 mill.

With the support of the Research Council, NTNU and SINTEF have built a national Smart Grid laboratory in Trondheim. The laboratory is system-oriented i.e. well suited for testing and verifying interaction between components and subsystems and can provide a modern laboratory infrastructure for research, demonstration, verification, testing and teaching. The lab supports a variety of areas and use case from large-scale transmission to on-premises distribution and smart homes. Concept: An important element of the laboratory concept is the ability to integrate real-time simulated power systems with physical model power systems (Hardware in the loop/ Power hardware in the loop) with performance up to 200 kVA and voltage level up to 400 V AC or 700 V DC. The frequency range covered is up to 5 kHz.

The main benefits from Smart Grids are expected to be systemic in nature as they will arise from the combination of technological, regulatory, economic and behavioural changes. Such complex systems call for cooperation between experts from several differe nt domains (e.g. power engineering, telematics, ICT, economics etc.) to obtain interoperable, safe, secure and cost effective solutions. The Use Case Methodology represents the current state of the art in engineering of such complex systems. A Use Case is defined as a specific sequence of actions or functions that a system can perform, interacting with individual or multiple end-users of the system to achieve certain objectives. Smart charging of an Electric Vehicle (EV) or Smart Meter Reading are example s of high level Use Cases. Immature and risky use cases are best studied and tested in laboratories. More mature Use Cases and those which include the behaviour or human response of customers need to be tested in "living labs" like Demo Norway. Most enabl ing technologies required in foreseeable Use Cases are known, but the new challenge of Smart grid projects is their integration. Advancing the progress on interoperability and integration of new grid components in the Norwegian Power System requires a lab oratory infrastructure of national scale. This is today not available in Norway. For supporting Smart grid development and facilitating successful technology deployment, access to both real and laboratory power systems are needed in order to design, devel op and test smart grid Use Cases and technologies. The vision of this proposal is to create the national laboratory platform needed for that purpose. The main R&D challenges supported by the Laboratory Infrastructure are: 1) Development of smart grid Use Cases, testing and evaluation of their performance, 2) Solving problems within smart grid interoperability, 3) Development and testing of new technologies to support smart grid Use Cases.

Funding scheme:

FORINFRA-Nasj.sats. forskn.infrastrukt

Funding Sources