Our electrical energy world dramatically changed for both Generation and consumption. For generation, we used to use traditional power stations which base on fossil fuels like coal, petroleum and natural gas, in recent years we change to renewable energy sources like wind and solar to extent that solar energy generation became representing high portion of power capacity, in the year 2017 solar power capacity contributes by approx. 72% of new added capacities. On the consumption side, most of people use new kinds of loads like electric cars and smart homes, so both generation and consumption patterns have been changed dramatically, and this requires from us to have flexible power grid to accommodate these high changes. Let us discuss some factors needed to be consider for this transition:
Smart solar inverter
It’s the link to the smart grid. The solar inverter should have high advanced communication capability with smart grid in addition to analytic, computing and memory capabilities to provide all information and control features to the smart grid energy management system.
Smart energy management system
Our loads pattern ramps up and down instantly, with away differs from standard PV solar generation, as solar electricity generation is intermittent because it depends of solar radiation. Consequently, smart energy management system is the solution to support the power grid, making it able to handle diversity of such loads by controlling all kinds of distributed energy sources not only solar stations. The smart energy management system has the capability to shift some of load capacities from time to time over the day to achieve consistency.
Using the new technology communication systems
An important key to achieve grid flexibility, is to have reliable communication and control systems, it is a way of transition from old manual premises control to cloud base control. This system will be able to see the whole network parameters and then takes the best correction action of load/generation shifting if needed to achieve the optimal grid operation.
The most common communication systems nowadays are cellular networks and ethernet, and fortunately these system prices are declining while their reliability, efficiency and coverage capability increase. One more thing, the capability of applied communication system to communicate with different types of other communication systems, protocols is an important feature to achieve the integrity and flexibility in the power grid.
Cyber protection and achieving security
As long as we had advanced communication system and flexible power grid, there should be a certain level of cyber protection to protect our grid communication and control systems against attackers.
