EPRI, NREL and Univ. of Washington create consortium to support inverter research
A collaboration between the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the University of Washington has yielded a new consortium dedicated to aiding research into grid-forming inverters.
The Universal Interoperability for Grid-Forming Inverters (UNIFI) is meant to be a public-private, industry-wide effort, focused on advancing research into the aforementioned inverters to aid decarbonization on the grid-at-large. Such inverters would help this along with their support of variable renewable energy growth. If successful, the partners believe the effort could yield power sector decarbonization through 2035.
The consortium will bring members together to theorize, model, test and develop inverter technology capable of improving integration of clean energy resources. These will include but not be limited to solar photovoltaics, stationary energy storage and wind power. Along the way it will also create standards under which all inverter manufacturers can align to guarantee interoperability of products.
“Maintaining grid reliability amid increasing renewable energy penetration involves fundamental changes to power system operation and the resources leveraged to provide grid services,” Daniel Brooks, vice president of integrated grid and energy systems at EPRI, said. “This consortium brings together leading experts to research how to enable inverter-based resources to help shape a reliable grid for today and tomorrow.”
To date, UNIFI has been funded through a $25 million award from the DOE. Partners include three DOE national labs, 11 North American universities, six inverter manufacturers, five simulation software vendors, two North American system operators and eight North American power system utilities.
Among other things, these partners hope to create inverter controllers, simulation techniques and hardware testbeds to promote grid resilience and reliability.
