SCC: Empowering Smart and Connecticut Communities through Programmable Community Microgrids

智能互联社区（S CC）的基石是一个弹性电力网络，支持关键基础设施和其他对公民至关重要的功能。然而，现有的电力网络很难维持不断增长的社区日益增长的需求。根据能源部的数据，2015年，美国客户平均经历了198分钟的停电，这表明电力弹性不令人满意。此外，分布式能源（DER），如越来越多地安装在美国社区的光伏发电（PV），未能提高电力弹性，因为它们无法应对持续的电网突发事件。除了这些挑战之外，极端天气事件和网络攻击可能会导致灾难性的停电。微电网已被证明是电力弹性的一个有前途的范例。不幸的是，由于对硬件的依赖，将社区电力基础设施转变为真正的智能微电网仍然非常困难;有限的，不可扩展的分析;更广泛的数字表面容易受到网络攻击。该项目的主要目标是创建智能可编程微电网（SPM）。我们的关键创新是虚拟化微电网功能，使其成为软件定义和硬件独立的，以便将DER转换为社区微电网变得负担得起，自主和安全。为了实现我们的主要目标，我们的团队将：1）构建一个可编程的微电网平台，将传统上依赖硬件的微电网功能虚拟化为灵活的软件服务，完全解决硬件依赖问题，并实现前所未有的低成本; 2）开创了微电网软件定义运行优化的概念，其中运行目标，电网连接，和DER参与将由软件和即插即用定义，并可以快速重新配置，基于模块化和收紧模型的发展和一种新的异步基于价格的分解和协调方法; 3）设计用于微电网组件或微电网的异构不确定性和即插即用下的在线稳定性评估的软件定义的分布式形式分析; 4）开发基于实时学习的网络安全功能，以保护SPM免受电力机器人攻击;和5）启用厌氧生物质消化器（AD）通过在SPM中虚拟化AD的调度和控制，将其作为环境友好和可调度的DER。拟议的SPM将通过最近建立的网络物理测试平台在CT社区微电网上进行演示。 该项目将提供开创性的、可复制的技术，以经济高效地实现美国能源基础设施的现代化，并将今天的社区电力基础设施转变为明天的灵活服务，实现自我配置、自我修复、自我优化和自我保护。预计这些技术将被广泛采用，特别是那些电力成本高、能源可靠性低和复原力差的社区。该项目将利用Eversource Energy Center（EEC）的资源组织年度EEC研讨会，吸引来自主要利益相关者的用户和参与者，包括公用事业，监管机构，州政府，州立法者和城镇。这个S CC项目将通过提供新的课程和使用可编程微电网作为生活实验室来帮助学生获得解决能源弹性和安全问题的实践经验，从而影响来自多个学科的大量研究生和本科生。该项目的影响将通过康州大学的电力工程研究生证书课程超越大学课堂。该项目旨在通过多种渠道让妇女、代表性不足的少数民族和残疾人参与到这个S CC项目的发展中来。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The keystone of smart & connected communities (S&CCs) is a resilient electric network which supports critical infrastructures and other functions vital for citizens. Existing electric networks, however, can hardly sustain the ever-increasing demand of growing communities. According to the Department of Energy, in 2015, U.S. customers experienced an average of 198 minutes of power outage, indicating an unsatisfied electricity resilience. Furthermore, distributed energy resources (DERs), such as photovoltaics (PVs) increasingly installed in U.S. communities, fail to improve electricity resilience, because they cannot ride through sustained grid contingencies. Adding to these challenges, extreme weather events and cyber-attacks can potentially lead to catastrophic blackouts. Microgrids have proved to be a promising paradigm for electricity resiliency. Unfortunately, transforming community power infrastructures to truly smart microgrids remains prohibitively difficult due to dependence on hardware; limited, unscalable analytics; and broader digital surfaces vulnerable to cyber-attacks. The main objective of this project is to create smart programmable microgrids (SPMs). Our key innovation is to virtualize microgrid functions, making them software-defined and hardware-independent, so that converting DERs to community microgrids becomes affordable, autonomic, and secure. To achieve our main objective, our team will: 1) Architect a programmable microgrid platform for virtualizing traditionally hardware-dependent microgrid functions as flexible software services, fully resolving hardware dependence issues and enabling unprecedentedly low costs; 2) Pioneer a concept of software-defined operation optimization for microgrids, where operation objectives, grid connection, and DER participations will be defined by software and plug-and-play, and can be quickly reconfigured, based on the development of modularized and tightened models and a novel asynchronous price-based decomposition-and-coordination method; 3) Devise a software-defined distributed formal analysis for online stability assessment under heterogeneous uncertainties and plug-and-play of microgrid components or microgrids; 4) Develop a real-time-learning-based cybersecurity function to protect SPMs against power bot attacks; and 5) Enable anaerobic-biomass-digesters (ADs) as environmentally friendly and dispatchable DERs by virtualizing the dispatch and control of ADs in SPM. The proposed SPM will be demonstrated on a CT community microgrid through a recently built cyber-physical testbed. This project will provide groundbreaking, replicable technologies to modernize cost-effectively America's energy infrastructures in the S&CC and could transform today's community power infrastructures into tomorrow's flexible services towards self-configuration, self-healing, self-optimizing, and self-protection. The proposed technologies are expected to be widely adopted especially by those communities suffering high electricity costs, low energy reliability, and poor resilience performances. This project will leverage resources of Eversource Energy Center (EEC) to organize Annual EEC Workshops which will attract users and participants from key stakeholders including utilities, regulators, state governments, state legislators and towns and cities. This S&CC project will impact a large population of graduate and undergraduate students from multiple disciplines by offering new curriculums and using programmable microgrid as a living laboratory to help students gain hands-on experiences to tackle energy resiliency and security problems. The influence of the project will reach beyond university classrooms through UConn's Power Engineering Graduate Certificate Program. This project aims to involve women, underrepresented minorities and persons with disabilities in the development of this S&CC project through multiple channels.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.