Resilience in the Home Office Through a Scaled-down Microgrid
- Conference
- Location
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Virtual Conference
- Publication Date
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July 26, 2021
- Start Date
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July 26, 2021
- End Date
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July 19, 2022
- Conference Session
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Energy Conversion and Conservation Division Technical Session 2: Solar Track
- Tagged Division
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Energy Conversion and Conservation
- Page Count
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33
- DOI
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10.18260/1-2--37674
- Permanent URL
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https://peer.asee.org/37674
- Download Count
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436
Paper Authors
Tessa Veurink University of Pittsburgh
Tessa Veurink graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering with a concentration in Electric Power. Her interests include renewable energy, sustainability, and electric power.
Bradley G. Fox University of Pittsburgh
Bradley Fox is an electrical engineering student at the University of Pittsburgh. He is interested in power electronics and enjoys learning about a variety of other disciplines as well. He plans to start his career in industry in 2021 and grow as a professional through challenging himself and experience. Besides engineering, Bradley loves to play volleyball and tennis, run, juggle, and learn new skills and hobbies.
Sabrina R. Helbig University of Pittsburgh
Sabrina is a first-year graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh where she is studying electrical engineering focused in electric power. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh with her B.S. in Electrical Engineering, concentration in electric power, and minors in computer science and French in December 2020. Her interests include clean energy, power grid resilience, and power electronics.
Duncan Penizotto University of Pittsburgh
Duncan Penizotto is a recently graduated student from the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering. He graduated with a BS in Computer Engineering and is employed with OneEnergy in Findlay, OH.
Robert J. Kerestes University of Pittsburgh
Robert Kerestes, PhD, is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Pittsburgh's Swanson School of Engineering. Robert was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He got his B.S. (2010), his M.S (2012). and his PhD (2014) from the University of Pittsburgh, all with a concentration in electric power systems. Robert’s academic focus is in education as it applies to engineering at the collegiate level. His areas of interest are in electric power systems, in particular, electric machinery and electromagnetics. Robert has worked as a mathematical modeler for Emerson Process Management, working on electric power applications for Emerson’s Ovation Embedded Simulator. Robert also served in the United States Navy as an interior communications electrician from 1998-2002 on active duty and from 2002-2006 in the US Naval Reserves.
Brandon M. Grainger University of Pittsburgh
Brandon Grainger, PhD is currently an assistant professor and associate director of the Electric Power Engineering Laboratory in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt), Swanson School of Engineering. He is also the associate director of the Energy GRID Institute. He holds a PhD in electrical engineering with a specialization in power conversion. He also obtained his master’s degree in electrical engineering and bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering (with minor in electrical engineering) all from Pitt. He was also one of the first original R.K. Mellon graduate student fellows through the Center for Energy at Pitt.
Dr. Grainger’s research interests are in electric power conversion, medium to high voltage power electronics (HVDC and STATCOM), general power electronic converter design (topology, controller design, magnetics), resonant converters and high power density design, power semiconductor evaluation (SiC and GaN) and reliability assessment, military power systems, DC system design and protection, fault identification techniques, and power electronics for microgrid applications.
Dr. Grainger has either worked or interned for ABB Corporate Research in Raleigh, NC; ANSYS Inc. in Southpointe, PA; Mitsubishi Electric in Warrendale, PA; Siemens Industry in New Kensington, PA; and has regularly volunteered at Eaton’s Power Systems Experience Center in Warrendale, PA designing electrical demonstrations. In his career thus far, he has contributed to 75+ articles in the general area of electric power engineering (emphasis on electric power conversion) and all of which have been published through the IEEE. Dr. Grainger is a senior member of the IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) and Industrial Electronics Society (IES) and is an annual reviewer of various power electronic conferences and transaction articles. Dr. Grainger is a Senior Member of the IEEE and served as the IEEE Pittsburgh PELS Chapter Chair over the last 3 years for which the section has won numerous awards under his leadership.
Abstract
Having power sources close to the end user establishes resilience in the event of power outages. In order to effectively mitigate any risk of losing power and productivity, major office buildings usually have some sort of backup generation to sustain a business. Homes generally do not have a robust back-up power system, so when a person is working from home and the power goes out, productivity stops. Therefore, a new power grid solution is needed. Coming from the metric prefix atto, meaning 10-18, an atto-grid provides power to a singular room or section of room which makes it even smaller than a picogrid. This atto-grid powers the typical load of a standard, single-person office: a printer, a laptop, a phone, and a lamp. The atto-grid project was proposed by a professor within [department] as part of a senior design course, and required distributed generation, connection to the building electrical grid, and a monitoring system for volts, amps, and watts. With these requirements in mind, the senior design team was able to design the atto-grid with two types of distributed generation, an inverter, manual switches and contactors for isolation, and accessible outlet receptacles for users to supply power to their at-home office load. An economic cost-benefit analysis was conducted as well for the purpose of determining the atto-grid’s availability to different income levels. For hardware, results of tests on power quality and uptime will be presented; for software, metrics covering response time and accuracy will be analyzed and discussed. Finally, the budget, timeline, and expectations from the department faculty and domain advisors are discussed. Throughout the design process and semester, the design team learned technical and practical lessons that were brought up due to the semester coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite technical and practical challenges, the team delivered on all requirements from the senior design curriculum, as well as the technical requirements based on the project proposal. The team acknowledges ways to improve the design if constraints were different, such as time, budget, and skillset. Finally, this paper will discuss feedback received from faculty and domain advisors throughout the semester, as well as reflect on progress and achievements for the atto-grid project.
Veurink, T., & Fox, B. G., & Helbig, S. R., & Penizotto, D., & Kerestes, R. J., & Grainger, B. M. (2021, July), Resilience in the Home Office Through a Scaled-down Microgrid Paper presented at 2021 ASEE Virtual Annual Conference Content Access, Virtual Conference. 10.18260/1-2--37674
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