The Center for Advanced Power Engineering Research (CAPER) is a membership driven consortium among several universities and numerous industry partners created to develop and demonstrate a comprehensive and integrated methodology for grid modernization. Its Industry Advisory Board (IAB), composed of numerous industry partners, meets twice per year with CAPER researchers and students to conduct business and to engage in discussions about the Center’s research and education activities.

Host

The host University for the CAPER meeting was the Clemson University Restoration Institute (CURI), located at 1250 Supply Street, North Charleston, SC.

Attendees

There were

  • 14 industry and government
  • 15 university and staff

Workshop Highlights

Workshop started at 8:40 am with Steve Whisenant providing opening remarks. Curtiss Fox with CURI reviewed safety protocol. Steve proceeded to talk about the purpose of CAPER and the intent of today’s meeting which is to review and select projects for 2015.

  • Curtiss started meeting with short history of CURI and the SCE&G Drive Train Facility capabilities.
  • Background for today’s meeting:
    • Steve followed up with a review of the September 19, 2014 meeting at UNC Charlotte where researchers were encouraged to generate research proposals.
    • Following the 9/19/2014 meeting, Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) asked for research topics specifically tied to the research themes generated during the 9/19/2014 meeting that would incorporate the eGRID capabilities at CURI. Topics were generated by industry and forwarded to CAPER researchers for review.
    • CAPER researchers prepared white papers on the topics which were submitted to SRNL (Joe Cordaro). Joe provided an update later in the meeting.

Proposals

CAPER Proposals were next on the agenda. Proposal presentations were:

P-2014-01:Critical Infrastructure Resilience of the Distribution Grid
Project Leader: Dr. Badrul Chowdhury, UNC Charlotte

P-2014-02:Distribution Planning Criteria and Tools for Future Distributed Energy Resource Penetration Scenarios using Probabilistic Approach
Project Leader: Dr. David Lubkeman, NC State

P-2014-03Cyber Vulnerability Assessment of Electrical Power Systems using Distributed Synchrophasors
Project Leader: Dr. Manjrekar, UNC Charlotte

Next, Joe Cordaro of SRNL went over DOE’s Five Year Plan

  • Joe stated that all three proposals tied to the focus of the DOE Five Year Plan.
  • SRNL has been asked by DOE to facilitate a consortium to address SE Grid issues. Joe stated that CAPER is that consortium, it is already underway and will align very well with DOE focused projects in 2016.
  • Steven Chen (PFP Cybersecurity) suggested a hacking-in project to demonstrate vulnerabilities of power grid components.

Joe and Steve discussed areas of collaboration between SRNL and CAPER.

Curtiss Fox presented a technical briefing on the Drive Train Test Facility and eGrid.

  • A comment was made that linking the three CAPER universities (connectivity) would be another good project and topic for discussion at a later date.

John McIntosh of SRNL delivered a presentation on: Data Management of the Drive Train, eGRID and SEL Monitoring System.

While IAB members held a closed door meeting, the rest of the attendees went on tour of CURI’s Drive Train and eGrid facility guided by Curtiss Fox.

Action Items

Steve Whisenant is to send CSC an outline on Power Systems Fundaments for review, comments, additions or deletions.

Meeting adjourned at 4:45 pm.

Next IAB Meeting: April 10, 2015 NC State University

2015 Research Planning Workshop: August 7, 2015 in Asheville, NC

Location

North Charleston, South Carolina

Start Time – End Time

December 1, 2014 8:30 AM – 4:00 PM