Power Electronics and Controls

Sandia Energy > Programs > Electric Grid > Power Electronics and Controls

Sandia’s work in power electronics and controls supports grid modernization by developing ways to increase resiliency, performance, and efficiency.

An Integrated Approach

Secure Scalable Microgrid Test Bed
The Secure Scalable Microgrid Test Bed can be configured to simulate complex power systems.

Sandia has an established history of applying engineering principles to achieve complete systems-view solutions. Our research objective is to look beyond proprietary systems and instead pursue integration at a national scale, among multiple vendors, by helping to architect congruent communication, controls, and interconnection. Sandia’s extensive history in physical and cyber security provides unique perspectives for designing secure scalable architectures as well as identifying vulnerabilities, risks, and mitigation strategies for existing systems.

Sandia’s three-layer secure scalable microgrid control architecture, and our Virtual Power Plant provides preliminary solutions to integrating multiple distributed energy resources in a closed loop control fashion through common communication links. Through this unique research, Sandia demonstrated a laboratory-based microgrid operating with 100% penetration of stochastic sources and loads while maintaining critical stability and specified performance requirements.

Sandia has made significant investments in material science and device research. Fabrication of diodes, photoconductive switches, transistors, and many other components are part of these capabilities. More recently, in a Department of Energy Grand Challenge project funded through Laboratory Directed Research and Development, we are researching the development of wide-bandgap materials and devices. Silicon carbide and gallium nitride are two materials with wide bandgaps. Enabling these technologies will allow devices capable of operating at higher voltages, higher temperatures, and higher switching frequencies. This combination of capabilities will drive control bandwidths as well as more simplified and power dense circuit designs.
Components and systems R&D at Sandia include the creation of a secure scalable microgrid test bed that consists of three custom DC microgrids along with some AC component capabilities. These microgrids can be operated individually, merged into one larger microgrid, or organized as a network of microgrids. This laboratory platform enables a holistic approach to hardware, control, and energy storage system design. Centralized and distributed controls approaches can be implemented as well as algorithms for demand side management. Information flow and cybersecurity are integral aspects of this system allowing for hardening and security techniques to be developed.
With increasing renewable penetration and traditional generation being replaced by inverter-based solutions, the dynamics of the grid will change significantly. Inverter-based systems have the benefit of extremely fast response times, but the loss of inertia from traditional rotating generation will cause grid dynamics to increase in frequency. One Sandia area of expertise is dynamic simulations, both at the transmission and distribution level, to evaluate the impacts of potential future grid topologies. Sandia also designs control systems that maintain or improve stability in the face of increasing renewable penetrations, a capability that is synergistic with our ability to model future grid topologies. Our control systems span centralized designs, distributed structures, demand-side management, and optimization. Sandia uses techniques that span from conventional PID, to model predictive control, to Hamiltonian Surface Shaping and Power Flow Control (HSSPFCTM) based designs.

Ray Byrne

(505) 844-8716

rhbyrne@sandia.gov