Biblio

This paper presents a user-friendly design method for accurately sizing the distributed energy resources of a stand-alone microgrid to meet the critical load demands of a military, commercial, industrial, or residential facility when the utility power is not available. The microgrid combines renewable resources such as photovoltaics (PV) with an energy storage system to increase energy security for facilities with critical loads. The design tool's novelty includes compliance with IEEE standards 1562 and 1013 and addresses resilience, which is not taken into account in existing design methods. Several case studies, simulated with a physics-based model, validate the proposed design method. Additionally, the design and the simulations were validated by 24-hour laboratory experiments conducted on a microgrid assembled using commercial off the shelf components.

A major challenge for utilities is energy theft, wherein malicious actors steal energy for financial gain. One such form of theft in the smart grid is the fraudulent amplification of energy generation measurements from DERs, such as photo-voltaics. It is important to detect this form of malicious activity, but in a way that ensures the privacy of customers. Not considering privacy aspects could result in a backlash from customers and a heavily curtailed deployment of services, for example. In this short paper, we present a novel privacy-preserving approach to the detection of manipulated DER generation measurements.

To promote InGaP solar cell efficiency toward the theoretical limit, one promising approach is to incorporate multiple quantum wells (MQWs) into the InGaP host and improve its open-circuit voltage by facilitating radiative carrier recombination owing to carrier confinement. In this research, we demonstrate numerically that a strain-balanced (SB) In1-xGaxP/In1-yGayP MQW enhances confined carrier density while degrades the effective carrier mobility. However, a smart design of the MQW structure is possible by considering quantitatively the trade-off between carrier confinement effect and carrier transport, and MQW can be advantageous over the InGaP bulk material for boosting photovoltaic efficiency.