Flex Power Grid Lab
Advancing the knowledge of power electronics for a sustainable, smart grid
As the global electric utility industry works to create sustainable, secure and reliable power grids for the future, effective implementation will require harnessing new and emerging power electronics technology and components.
While rarely used in existing power grids, power electronics ultimately will be needed to interconnect large amounts of distributed sources of electricity such as wind and solar and to implement smarter, more reliable and secure electric energy networks.
New, complex challenges for power quality and grid stability
The level of small scale distributed generation being tied into the grid is already increasing. The resulting multi-directional power flows, combined with increasing use of information and communication technology (ICT) to control the grid, pose new challenges for ensuring power quality and grid stability.
As new devices are connected to the grid, new components will also be introduced. The future grid will become more complex - and standardization will become an issue. The question today is how to ensure the proper functioning of the future grid and the new devices and components.
Understanding component functionality before grid connection
Grid operators have been reluctant to include power electronics into increasingly complex grids because of the unknowns related to reliability and safety risk.
KEMA’s innovative “Flex Power Grid” laboratory is an advanced research and testing facility designed specifically to test a wide range of power electronics for use in electric transmission and distribution grids—before grid connection.
Using the facility’s programmable converter, capacitors, resistors and reactor, and intelligent control equipment, we are able to build a live representation of a real grid, with real components, plus all of the features clients want to test their components against. By testing equipment under complex realistic conditions, manufacturers and grid operators can have absolute confidence that the components will work in a real-life situation.
The Flex Power Grid lab also will help increase the understanding and development of effective approaches to transporting and storing sustainable generation-based electricity.
Ideal environment for power system simulation, component testing
The lab is the ideal environment to develop and perform state-of-the-art tests under controlled conditions for grid operators, manufacturers, researchers and students.
The lab is capable of supplying industrial medium-voltages (up to 24 kV) at a continuous high power rating (1 MVA) combined with complex realistic conditions on a 'bad grid' (DC up to 75 Hz AC, in four-quadrant operation), with pre-programmable distortion (harmonics up to 2.4 kHz or dynamic network phenomena).
The Flex Power Grid Lab enables clients to reproduce grid events to support abnormal operation investigations and to realistically test whether:
- distributed generation equipment will not disturb proper functioning of the grid
- (distributed generation) equipment will function properly and efficiently under severe future grid conditions
- a grid will operate reliably and stably under severe circumstances, with high penetration of certified DGs
- filters and conditioner’s will be able to compensate for grid inconsistencies to protect loads.
For more information, please contact us.