Danish Cell Controller Project

Prior to 1990, most Danish electric power was produced at large, centralized generation plants from which it was transmitted and distributed to commercial, industrial, and residential consumers. Since then, thousands of distributed generators have been added such that the installed generation capacity at the distribution level exceeds the generation capacity at the transmission level. The distributed generation (DG) assets include dispersed combined heat and power (CHP) plants and wind turbines, creating a “carpet” of generation at the low and medium voltage levels of the distribution system (see inset). These distributed resources provide renewable and flexible energy production and support local thermal heating loads but were designed to operate only while grid-connected and could not be used in the case of a major power outage. The high penetration of variable wind generation also created the situation where the transmission system had to balance all the local variability of wind (both real and reactive power).

A 400 kVAR synchronous condenser (SC) asset was designed and deployed for voltage and reactive power management during transient conditions. It can generate or absorb reactive power to support the system’s voltage level or to maintain a specified power factor. The SC is also capable of acting as a voltage master. Spirae designed and deployed a Cell Monitoring System (CMS), including the communication and control infrastructure, to collect real-time generation, load, and network status data. The CMS data collection, analysis, and archive was significantly automated and was used to inform Cell operation, Cell Controller design and lab testing, and modeling and simulation of various field scenarios. Spirae and Energynautics designed and developed a simulation model replicating the test area to support: - Power Flow analysis - Protection studies - Time domain simulation - Transformer inrush studies - Distributed control and algorithm validation - Controls testing and validation

• [Data Management - Connectivity Flexibility]
  Cell Controller Platfrom can be configured to varies networks, simulated or real and it is capable of managing various sizes of networks and number of assets.