Originally published
in the December 2009
issue of Planet-RT

Benjamin Schenkman of Sandia National Laboratories discusses the modelling, analysis, and testing, in a real-time simulation environment, of the Lanai power grid system for the integration and control of PhotoVoltaic (PV) distributed generation. 
The Lanai Island in Hawaii is part of the Hawaii Clean Energy Initiative (HCEI) to transition to 30% renewable green energy penetration by 2030.  In Lanai, the primary loads come from two Castle and Cook Resorts, in addition to residential needs.  The total peak load profile is 12470V, 5.5 MW.  Currently there are several diesel generators that meet these loading requirements. As part of the HCEI, Lanai has initially installed 1.2MW of PV generation.  The goal of this study has been to evaluate the impact of the PV with respect to conventional carbon-based diesel generation. 

For intermittent PV distributed generation, the overall stability and transient responses are investigated. 
A simple Lanai “like” model has been developed in the MATLAB/Simulink environment, and to accommodate real-time simulation of the hybrid power grid system the RT-LAB environment is used.  The diesel generators have been modelled using the SimPowerSystems toolbox swing equations and a custom Simulink module has been developed for High level PV generation.  All of the loads have been characterized primarily as distribution lines with series resistive load banks with one VAR load bank. 
Three-phase faults are implemented for each bus.  Both conventional and advanced control architectures will be used to evaluate the integration of the PV onto the current power grid system. 
The numerical results will report upon the performance and stability of the power grid during varying cloud cover scenarios.  The importance of assessing the real-time scenario is also included.

Author(s): Benjamin Schenkman,
Narrator: Benjamin Schenkman,

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