ACEP bolsters PSI team

Alaska Center for Energy and Power (ACEP) has welcomed Tawna Morgan to its Power Systems Integration (PSI) team.

Morgan will provide programming and data analysis support for the PSI Laboratory and the PSI program.

In addition to her work with the PSI Lab, Morgan will provide support to the software development of the Grid Bridging System (GBS) sizing tool, ACEP informed.

The GBS will provide grid support in the place of a diesel generator to allow higher amounts of renewable energy to be used in isolated microgrids.

Morgan will also work with the PSI team to provide programming support to improve and advance the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) system in the PSI lab.

To remind, the PSI Laboratory has recently completed the second round of testing for Oceana Energy’s hydrokinetic turbine, with plans to begin the third round early in 2018.

The PSI Laboratory was established for testing hardware and software components within an integrated grid system.

It operates on the same scale as a village power system, and has the ability to be modified for individual test scenarios. The lab transforms a potentially chaotic field testing environment into a continuously improving process for optimizing efficiencies, according to ACEP.

Designed for maximum flexibility, the system is said to be capable of testing a wide range of islanded microgrid and distributed generation scenarios, as well as the performance of individual components.

Examples include next generation utility energy storage such as innovative battery systems and flywheel technology, diesel-off operation, power electronics development and testing, and model verification.