Operational Resilience of Nuclear-Renewable Integrated-Energy Microgrids

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7 Scopus citations

Abstract

The increasing prevalence and severity of wildfires, severe storms, and cyberattacks is driving the introduction of numerous microgrids to improve resilience locally. While distributed energy resources (DERs), such as small-scale wind and solar photovoltaics with storage, will be major components in future microgrids, today, the majority of microgrids are backed up with fossil-fuel-based generators. Small modular reactors (SMRs) can form synergistic mix with DERs due to their ability to provide baseload and flexible power. The heat produced by SMRs can also fulfill the heating needs of microgrid consumers. This paper discusses an operational scheme based on distributed control of flexible power assets to strengthen the operational resilience of SMR-DER integrated-energy microgrids. A framework is developed to assess the operational resilience of SMR-DER microgrids in terms of system adaptive real-power capacity quantified as a response area metric (RAM). Month-long simulation results are shown with a microgrid developed in a modified Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)-30 bus system. The RAM values calculated along the operational simulation reflect the system resilience in real time and can be used to supervise the microgrid operation and reactor’s autonomous control.

Original languageEnglish
Article number789
JournalEnergies
Volume15
Issue number3
Early online dateJan 21 2022
DOIs
StatePublished - Feb 1 2022

Keywords

  • Cogeneration
  • Distributed energy resources
  • Flexible operation
  • Frequency control
  • Integrated-energy systems
  • Load following
  • Operational resilience
  • Small modular reactors

INL Publication Number

  • INL/JOU-21-65397
  • 105401

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