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Distributed Energy Resources (DER)

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab is developing methods and tools for conducting an integrated assessment of DER and forecast patterns of DER adoption for individual customers or groupings operating as a µGrid ("microgrid"). A customer adoption model (DER-CAM) has been developed that looks at on-site electricity and heat requirements and develops an optimal plan for customers to meet this requirement at overall minimum cost over a test period. DER-CAM has been applied to various case studies, and policy studies. The project is to extend this model to simulate customer DER decision making reflective of localized restrictions on DER adoption, such as air quality regulatory restrictions, building code constraints, site limitations, etc. analyzed through a geographic information system layer to DER-CAM. Also, a site DER operating model, the Site Energy Supply and Use (SESU) model, has been developed to test actual operating plans and to develop control algorithms for actual µGrids. On a broader policy level, ongoing work attempts to comprehensively estimate the benefits of distributed systems. Additional information is available here.

Project Team:

Chris Marnay (Project Lead)
Kristina Hamachi LaCommare
Ryan Firestone
Nan Zhou
Judy Lai
Michael Stadler