Enhancing Grid Resiliency through Improving Capabilities to Manage Communicating Energy Storage and Solar Systems, Expanding Standards and Developing Tools to Enable DNP3 Support of Storage Use Cases

Design and implementation of interoperable communications between distributed energy resources and other grid systems support flexible, integrated, reliable, and renewable grid operations. This project updated current communications standards to meet distributed energy resource monitoring and control requirements in California Rule 21 and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ 1547-2018 and other industry needs, and developed tools to accelerate adoption of distributed energy resources.
As the grid integrates more distributed energy resources, communications standards become essential to ensure that utilities and the public can maximize the operational functionality and financial value of distributed and traditional grid assets. Significant work to date has addressed communication standards for inverter-based distributed energy resource systems in general, but interoperable communication standards to support large-scale energy storage is still in development. When this project started, communication standards were based on earlier global efforts to define standard functionality for smart inverters. However, the primary focus of early-stage communication standards by manufacturers and in evaluations of field demonstrations were on solar systems with limited storage system use. These solar profiles include energy storage device- and system-level functionality needing further expansion and refinement to support energy storage.
This project improves the ability of grid operators to communicate with distributed energy resources and enhances the use and value of energy storage and solar generation. The results of this project provide four key benefits:
1. Maximize the use of solar and energy storage to benefit ratepayers and the grid.
2. Update existing industry documents to incorporate these new opportunities and meet requirements defined in grid specifications including California Rule 21 and IEEE Standard 1547-2018TM
3. Create open source tools to support manufacturers and industry stakeholders to implement the updated industry documents quickly and correctly.
4. Develop a framework for conformance testing to confirm that devices meet standards and requirements through testing and validation.