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New Operations Center Will Transform Nation's Electric Grid

This electricity infrastructure operations center is designed for research to help guard against threats ranging from natural disasters to international attack, and to make the grid more flexible, reliable and efficient.

(TNS) -- At the heart of the newest building on the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory campus is an operations center focused on making the largest and most complex machine ever created more secure and more reliable. “The Systems Engineering Building is a really generic name for a really cool place,” said Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, the nation’s deputy energy secretary, at the building’s dedication Wednesday.

“I wish it sounded sexier so people could appreciate what amazing things are going to happen inside of it.”

The complex and piecemeal grid system that delivers electricity across the nation is largely a 20th century structure, she said, and it won’t meet many of the demands or the opportunities of the 21st century.

It faces threats ranging from natural disasters to international attack, she said. “If we don’t protect the energy sector, we put every other sector of the economy in jeopardy.”

Inside the new building is an electricity infrastructure operations center designed for research to help guard against those threats and make the grid more flexible, reliable and efficient.

The center streams live grid data into two control rooms, allowing software and related tools to be tested to see how they perform without risking disruption of electricity delivery on the grid.

Operations can be mimicked to see the results of slight changes to the grid, such as adding more wind power, from the source of production through transmission to delivery to individual buildings.

The data-filled, electronic screens that line the front walls of the control rooms are cool, said engineer Karen Studarus during a tour of the center Wednesday. But the real magic is the access to live data for research and its analysis on high-performance computers.

“It is helping us understand the grid, analyze the grid and model the grid,” said Nik Foster, PNNL energy analyst.

Researchers can see the grid in more detail than ever before, enabling advancements critical to achieving a reliable and secure power system, said Steven Ashby, director of the Department of Energy national lab in Richland.

PNNL has developed systems, such as GridLAB-D, a first-of-its-kind analysis and simulation tool that allows users to see in extremely high resolution how making changes to one part of the grid affects other parts of the system.

The work done at the center will provide benefits from helping lower utility bills for Northwest consumers to increasing the use of renewable energy to leave the world a better place for our children and grandchildren, said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

And in true PNNL fashion, it is transitioning its research out of the laboratory into the real world, she said.

GridLAB-D is open source software, available for utilities worldwide to use to understand electricity distribution down to the customer level. Volttron, a PNNL system that allows appliances and other devices to communicate with each other to prioritize power needs and coordinate delivery, also is open source and publicly available.

The approach is intended to speed development and industry adoption for widespread modernization of the grid.

IncSys was one of PNNL’s first industry partners to use the new electricity infrastructure operations center.

“We train grid operators from around the world, such as those in Brazil before the World Cup,” said IncSys chief executive Robin Podmore in a statement. “PNNL’s new facility provides the capabilities and training environment industry has been waiting for. It is the best mock control room facility for training and human performance evaluation I have seen in the world.”

The center can also serve as a backup control center for regional utilities, said Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash.

The electrical industry is undergoing a transformation and its challenges have never been greater or more important, said Elliot Mainzer, chief executive of the Bonneville Power Administration.

“This is exactly the right facility at exactly the right time,” he said.

The new Systems Engineering Building also houses PNNL’s Building Operations Control Center.

It can look at the entire PNNL campus, including its approximately 35 buildings, and analyze more than 50,000 data points a day, said sustainability engineer Shan Belew.

On a bank of monitors hanging the length of the room, he can watch data ranging from which buildings are using the most energy to room-by-room operations of a climate control system that adapts to the absence of workers.

PNNL is working toward a 30 percent energy reduction on its campus between 2003 and this year.

But the operations control center is not only used to meet energy efficiency goals. It also is used as a showpiece. It serves as a living laboratory to demonstrate the cutting-edge technology developed at PNNL, Studarus said.

Elsewhere in the building is the Power Electronics Laboratory, large enough for electric vehicles to be driven in for research on charging, energy storage and controls. An adjacent outdoor area provides space to connect to even larger assets, such as utility-scale energy storage units and commercial-grade rooftop air conditioners.

“The staff conceived the building and will work in it. … We look forward to great things that you will do for the nation,” Ashby told employees at the dedication.

The 24,000-square-foot building on Horn Rapids Road was designed by Meier Architecture Engineering of Kennewick and built by DGR*Grant of Richland.

©2015 Tri-City Herald (Kennewick, Wash.) Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.