picture: University of Oklahoma engineers Jie Cai and Paul Moses had been awarded funding to check thermal power storage in business and residential buildings to advertise renewable power utilization.
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Credit: University of Oklahoma
There’s little question that at the moment’s electrical grid is getting old and being pushed to do greater than supposed. Extreme climate, pure disasters and elevated demand – all are taking a toll on America’s century-old infrastructure.
Across the globe, lots of of researchers have devoted their careers to finding out renewable power to help scale back carbon emissions and power independence. In September, University of Oklahoma assistant professor Jie Cai, Ph.D., and a staff of researchers had been awarded funding to check thermal power storage in business and residential buildings to advertise renewable power utilization.
The funding comes from the U.S. Department of Energy by way of its Establish Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). Cai’s venture was one of 29 new initiatives nationwide to obtain analysis funding totaling $21 million.
The venture is titled “Aging-Aware Management of Motorized Energy Storage for Grid Flexibility Provision.” Paul Moses, Ph.D., an assistant professor in OU’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Bo Shen, Ph.D., a senior analysis and growth scientist on the Building Technologies Research and Integration Center at Oak Ridge National Labs, collaborate with Cai.
“Our project aims to unlock the flexibility potential of demand-side resources and promote deeper renewable energy utilization by significantly reducing the lifecycle management and grid integration costs,” stated Cai who joined the OU School of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering in 2017.
Cai factors out that real-time provide and demand stability is the important thing to the secure and dependable operation of the electrical grid.
“The intermittency and uncertainty of renewable resources, such as solar and wind, pose challenges for maintaining real-time supply and demand balances. These challenges lead to a growing demand for fast-ramping resources such as diesel and natural gas generators to compensate for imbalances, which in turn increases the grid integration cost of renewable energy,” Cai stated.
Prominent examples embrace pumped storage hydropower and warmth pump-driven thermal storage in buildings. “However, the impact of flexibility provision on the lifetime of motorized energy storage is largely unknown and represents a major deterrent to their widespread adoption in the electricity market,” Cai stated.
Ultimately, the researchers wish to develop a numerical mannequin that may predict the getting old of electrical motors underneath totally different management situations, in addition to leverage the motor getting old mannequin for the synthesis of an improved management technique to attenuate the getting old impact of grid flexibility provision.
Project findings are anticipated to deal with gear reliability and lifelong considerations and promote the participation of motorized power storage within the electrical energy market.
To be taught extra concerning the Gallogly College of Engineering, go to ou.edu/coe.
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