Tennessee Valley Authority, TVA, has awarded a new research project to UK PEIK Institute and SPARK Laboratory researchers to study virtual power plants for the distributed energy resources aggregation and demand response optimal controls. The project will evaluate the potential beneficial impact of coordinated operation of appliances, including HVAC systems and water heaters, solar PV, battery systems, and electric vehicles on the future electric power distribution systems for communities.
Drew Frye, Program Manager of Grid Edge & EV Strategy, Enterprise Research & Technology Innovation, serves as the TVA project lead and Dan M. Ionel, ECE Professor and L. Stanley Pigman Chair in Power and PEIK Director as the principal investigator (PI) at UK. The project team at UK includes Huangjie Gong and Evan Jones, Ph.D. students, and Rosemary Alden, USP Ph.D. student. The research will utilize the capabilities developed at UK for the large-scale co-simulation of buildings and electric power distribution systems, which have been described in recent papers presented at large conferences such as IEEE ECCE, PES GM and ICRERA.