Sandia to Discuss Energy-Storage Test Protocols at the European PV Solar Energy Conference

A residential distributed energy-storage unit being installed (top) and inspected (bottom).

Researchers from Sandia will give a plenary talk on energy storage test protocols at the European PV Solar Energy Conference (EU PVSEC), to be held in September in Hamburg, Germany. Plenary presentations are given to the entire conference and reserved for outstanding papers which are seen as visionary in the field. In 2014, the conference hosted an audience of approximately 3,000 professionals from 76 countries.

In the plenary, researchers will discuss efforts to standardize interoperability certification protocols to validate distributed energy resource (DER) operation and communication within the power system. These protocols will provide for evaluation of energy storage interoperability and functionality, providing frequency and voltage stability of DER in bulk and local power systems.

Photovoltaics connect to the local power grid via inverters (background).

The research is being conducted by Sandia and its collaborators in the Smart Grid International Research Facility Network (SIRFN)—Austrian Institute of Technology, Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico in Italy, and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology’s Fukushima Renewable Energy Institute in Japan. The associated conference paper discusses advanced energy-storage requirements in each SIRFN country as well as the development of harmonized interoperable storage testing procedures, and presents experimental results from the laboratories.

Members of the research team previously co-authored an article about similar work for PV inverters and published another article on the importance of lab testing in the March/April 2015 issue of IEEE Power & Energy Magazine.