Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) is performing a test campaign for the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) to address high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) vulnerability of critical components of generation stations, with focus on early-time (E1) HEMP. The campaign seeks to establish response and damage thresholds for these critical elements in response to reasonable HEMP threat levels as a means for determining where vulnerabilities may exist or where mitigations may be needed. This report provides component vulnerability test results that will help to inform site vulnerability assessments and HEMP mitigation planning.
Sandia National Laboratories' (Sandia) Resilient Energy Systems (RES) Strategic Initiative is establishing a strategic vision for U.S. energy systems' resilience through threat-informed research and development, enabling energy and interdependent infrastructure systems to successfully adapt in an environment of accelerating change. A key challenge in promoting energy systems resilience lies in developing rigorous resilience analysis methodologies to quantify system performance. Resilience analysis methodologies should enable evaluation of the consequences of various disruptions and the relative effectiveness of potential mitigations. To address this challenge, RES synthesized the common components of Sandia's resilience frameworks into an integrated methodology for energy and infrastructure resilience analysis. This report documents, demonstrates, and extends this methodology.
An analysis of microgrids to increase resilience was conducted for the island of Puerto Rico. Critical infrastructure throughout the island was mapped to the key services provided by those sectors to help inform primary and secondary service sources during a major disruption to the electrical grid. Additionally, a resilience metric of burden was developed to quantify community resilience, and a related baseline resilience figure was calculated for the area. To improve resilience, Sandia performed an analysis of where clusters of critical infrastructure are located and used these suggested resilience node locations to create a portfolio of 159 microgrid options throughout Puerto Rico. The team then calculated the impact of these microgrids on the region's ability to provide critical services during an outage, and compared this impact to high-level estimates of cost for each microgrid to generate a set of efficient microgrid portfolios costing in the range of 218-917M dollars. This analysis is a refinement of the analysis delivered on June 01, 2018.
The following document provides guidance for developing a microgrid preliminary design specification. Development of a microgrid preliminary design specification takes previous analysis has been done in coordination with key stakeholders to scope out and perform analysis on a microgrid conceptual design to be further developed into a preliminary design. The microgrid preliminary design specification outlines the functional requirements and recommendations for the preliminary design that can be put into request for information (RFI) or request for quote (RFQ) process in order to select a microgrid integrator to oversee the final design and construction process of the microgrid to be implemented. In addition to requirements, the RFI/RFQ needs to specify of the responsibilities of the microgrid integrator as well as the microgrid owner/operator of the completed microgrid as part of the microgrid preliminary design specification as well as procurement process to evaluate the bidders applying to be the microgrid integrators.
This paper investigates the suitability of sizing the electrical export cable based on the rating of the contributing WECs within a farm. These investigations have produced a new methodology to evaluate the probabilities associated with peak power values on an annual basis. It has been shown that the peaks in pneumatic power production will follow an exponential probability function for a linear model. A methodology to combine all the individual probability functions into an annual view has been demonstrated on pneumatic power production by a Backward Bent Duct Buoy (BBDB). These investigations have also resulted in a highly simplified and perfunctory model of installed cable cost as a function of voltage and conductor cross-section. This work solidifies the need to determine electrical export cable rating based on expected energy delivery as opposed to device rating as small decreases in energy delivery can result in cost savings.
The community of Cordova, Alaska currently uses diesel and run-of-river hydro generation for its electricity needs. In the past, 60% of the Cordova summer load was supplied by the run-of-river generation. The majority of the time, the load was supplied only by the run-of-river generation. The bulk of generated electricity is delivered to Cordova's industrial fish processing plants and to other industrial loads. With the expansion of Cordova's fishing industry, the run-of-river generation is less often able to supply 100% of the load demand. When the run-of-river generation is not able to supply 100% of the load demand it has to be supplemented by diesel generation. There are also many times when the load demand is low and the available run-of-river generation has to be curtailed by spilling water which could be stored in an energy storage system. Sandia National Laboratories and Alaska Center for Energy and Power collaborated to evaluate how an energy storage system can be used to capture the spilled water and how it can economically and technically benefit Cordova during the fishing season and other times throughout the year. Results from this study are summarized in this report.
This report describes the application of an approach for determining grid modernization investments that can best improve the resilience of communities. Under the direction of the US Department of Energy's Grid Modernization Laboratory Consortium, Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) and Los Alamos National Laboratory (Los Alamos) collaborated with community stakeholders in New Orleans, Louisiana on grid modernization strategies for resilience. Past disruptions to the electric grid in New Orleans have contributed to an inability to provide citizens with adequate access to a wide range of infrastructure services. Using a performance-based resilience metric, Sandia and Los Alamos performed analysis on how to improve access to infrastructure services across New Orleans after a major disruption using a system of resilience nodes. Resilience nodes rely on a combination of urban planning with grid investment planning for resilience in order to design clustered infrastructure assets with highly resilient electrical supply. Results of the analysis led to suggestion of 22 draft resilience node locations that can provide a wide range of infrastructure services equitably to New Orleans citizens. This report serves as a proof-of-concept for the Urban Resilience Planning Process, and describes several gaps that should be overcome in order to integrate resilience planning between electric utilities and local governments.
In June 2016, the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) in collaboration with the Renewable Energy Branch for the Hawaii State Energy Office (HSEO), the Hawaii Community Development Authority (HCDA), the United States Navy (Navy), and Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia) established a project to 1) assess the current functionality of the energy infrastructure at the Kalaeloa Community Development District, and 2) evaluate options to use both existing and new distributed and renewable energy generation and storage resources within advanced microgrid frameworks to cost-effectively enhance energy security and reliability for critical stakeholder needs during both short-term and extended electric power outages. This report discusses the results of a stakeholder workshop and associated site visits conducted by Sandia in October 2016 to identify major Kalaeloa stakeholder and tenant energy issues, concerns, and priorities. The report also documents information on the performance and cost benefits of a range of possible energy system improvement options including traditional electric grid upgrade approaches, advanced microgrid upgrades, and combined grid/microgrid improvements. The costs and benefits of the different improvement options are presented, comparing options to see how well they address the energy system reliability, sustainability, and resiliency priorities identified by the Kalaeloa stakeholders.
In 2012, Hurricane Sandy devastated much of the U.S. northeast coastal areas. Among those hardest hit was the small community of Hoboken, New Jersey, located on the banks of the Hudson River across from Manhattan. This report describes a city-wide electrical infrastructure design that uses microgrids and other infrastructure to ensure the city retains functionality should such an event occur in the future. The designs ensure that up to 55 critical buildings will retain power during blackout or flooded conditions and include analysis for microgrid architectures, performance parameters, system control, renewable energy integration, and financial opportunities (while grid connected). The results presented here are not binding and are subject to change based on input from the Hoboken stakeholders, the integrator selected to manage and implement the microgrid, or other subject matter experts during the detailed (final) phase of the design effort.
The human brain (volume=1200cm3) consumes 20W and is capable of performing > 10^16 operations/s. Current supercomputer technology has reached 1015 operations/s, yet it requires 1500m^3 and 3MW, giving the brain a 10^12 advantage in operations/s/W/cm^3. Thus, to reach exascale computation, two achievements are required: 1) improved understanding of computation in biological tissue, and 2) a paradigm shift towards neuromorphic computing where hardware circuits mimic properties of neural tissue. To address 1), we will interrogate corticostriatal networks in mouse brain tissue slices, specifically with regard to their frequency filtering capabilities as a function of input stimulus. To address 2), we will instantiate biological computing characteristics such as multi-bit storage into hardware devices with future computational and memory applications. Resistive memory devices will be modeled, designed, and fabricated in the MESA facility in consultation with our internal and external collaborators.
This report summarizes the Energy Assessment performed for Venetie, Alaska using the principals of an Energy Surety Microgrid (ESM) The report covers a brief overview of the principals of ESM, a site characterization of Venetie, a review of the consequence modeling, some preliminary recommendations, and a basic cost analysis.