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Project # 80
Designing Scalable, Affordable, and Efficient Microgrids

Team Lead: Cecilia Romero
Other Team Members:
Faculty Advisor(s): Eric Jones
Department: Industrial, Manufacturing & Systems Engineering
Project Type: REU
Title: Designing Scalable, Affordable, and Efficient Microgrids
Abstract: Society cannot function without electricity, yet natural disasters, unexpected energy production cuts, or simply a downed power line can sever our connection to this critical resource. Electricity is mostly derived from the burning of limited fossil fuels. In response, society has been pushing toward clean renewable options to increase the sustainability of energy sources, but renewable options like solar and wind are intermittent making ensuring reliability more difficult. A potential solution to the dual problems of sustainability and reliability are microgrids. Microgrids generally use renewable energy resources with battery storage and have controls that manage the electrical sources, energy storage, and connection to the grid. This dramatically increases reliability and, in certain use cases, energy security; if the power grid fails, the microgrid can pick up the slack. Microgrids are now a seasoned technology, but a lot can still be done to improve them. Therefore, our research goal was to evaluate and improve a small-scale microgrid that can generate power via solar (an intermittent but complementary renewable energy source) and store energy via a battery system, and use this information to design a new smart off-microgrid system that is scalable, affordable, and efficient.
Poster: View Poster #80 (PDF)
Judges Scoring: Submit Evaluation (judges only)