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Data-Driven Approach for Hydropower Plant Controller Prototyping using Remote Hardware-in-the-Loop (DR-HIL)
Lead Companies
NREL
Lead Researcher (s)
- Mayank Panwar, Mayank.panwar@nrel.gov
Real-time prototyping of hydropower plant controls is important for reducing the cost and the risk of field deployment. In this project, we propose to 1) collect design and operational data from actual hydro plants and 2) use a physics-informed machine learning approach for real-time emulation of hydropower plants, including the hydro turbine and hydrodynamics. The data-driven models will be interfaced with digital real-time simulation at NREL’s Flatirons campus for hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing of the governor hardware device or controller-HIL (CHIL). The proposed approach will also establish the connectivity-based remote CHIL testing capability using real-time data streams from an actual hydro plant. This integrated data-driven hydro-plant emulation with CHIL will be used to prototype hydro-governor controls and, in the future, provide an opportunity to test hydropower integrated with various technologies (e.g., conventional and renewable generation, energy conversion, etc.) as HIL.
Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Powerhouse Equipment
Research Sub-Category
Governor
Status
ongoing
Completion Date
TBD
- Conventional Hydro
Emulating Hydropower in a Controlled Real-world Environment at ARIES for Rapid Prototyping of Next-generation Hydro-controls [HydroWIRES]
Lead Companies
NREL
Lead Researcher (s)
- Mayank Panwar, Mayank.panwar@nrel.gov
This project aims to solve the industry problem of risky, expensive, and time-consuming field validation of new hydropower governor controls by developing a controlled lab environment for evaluation. In this environment, researchers will be able to easily plug in real controller hardware to test under various grid conditions. This effort will utilize a variety of ARIES tools, including digital real-time simulation, actual hardware grid controllers, digital governors, variable speed hydro-generator, and more.
Technology Application
Conventional Hydro
Research Category
Powerhouse Equipment
Research Sub-Category
Governor
Status
ongoing
Completion Date
TBD
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Contact Marla Barnes at: marla@hydro.org