Abstract

Long-duration energy storage (LDES) is a key resource in enabling zero-emissions electricity grids but its role within different types of grids is not well understood. In this work, we find that a) LDES is particularly valuable in majority wind-powered regions and regions with diminishing hydropower generation, b) seasonal operation of storage becomes cost-effective if storage capital costs fall below US$5/kWh, and c) mandating the installation of enough LDES to enable year-long storage cycles would reduce electricity prices by over 70% during times of high demand. Given the asset and resource diversity of the Western Interconnect, our results can provide grid planners in many regions with guidance on how LDES impacts and is impacted by energy storage mandates, investments in LDES research and development, and generation mix and transmission expansion decisions (Staadecker, M. et al., Nature Communications, 2024). In the second project, we propose for the first time, a non-cooperative game framework that incorporates learned inverter dynamics of Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) from a nonlinear high-fidelity model to represent their participation in a Virtual Power Plant to meet regulation services in support of the upper-level grid (Serna-Torre, P. and Hidalgo-Gonzalez, P. PSCC, 2024). This work is first of its kind and it is a stepping stone to answering fundamental questions related to inverter dominated grids.

Bio

Patricia Hidalgo-Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Diego. She holds a Ph.D. and two M.Sc. from the University of California, Berkeley. She graduated as an Industrial and Electrical engineer from Pontificia Universidad Católica of Chile. Her work focuses on high penetration of renewable energy using optimization, control theory and machine learning. She is generally interested in capacity expansion modeling, power system dynamics, resilient grids for extreme weather events, environmental justice, distributed control, and learning for dynamical systems with safety guarantees. Her work has been funded by the California Energy Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Sloan Foundation, the Environmental Defense Fund, the University of California Office of the President and GridLab. Prof. Hidalgo-Gonzalez is an NSF GRFP fellow, Siebel Scholar in Energy, Rising Star in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has been awarded Best paper at the Power Systems Computation Conference 2020, and is part of the Editors’ Highlights in Nature Communications (best 50 papers recently published in “Engineering and Infrastructure”), among other recognitions. She is part of the IEEE Task force “Data-driven controls for distributed systems” and has served as best paper judge in the IEEE Control Systems Society Technical Committee on Energy Systems. She has also served as the opening talk for the energy storage session in EPRI's 43^rd Seminar on Resource Planning in Washington D.C., and as a speaker at a symposium from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in Halle, Germany, among others.

Research, Related Papers

Non-cooperative games to control learned inverter dynamics of distributed energy resources
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378779624005273

The value of long-duration energy storage under various grid conditions in a zero-emissions future
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-53274-6