NREL taps Ametek for grid simulation system
Test & Measurement World Staff- August 15, 2012
Ametek Programmable Power has shipped a regenerative 1-MVA AC+DC power system to the Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) on the campus of the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, CO. The system will be used for grid simulation in the test and evaluation of advanced energy systems, such as micro-grids and renewable energy inverters.
Based on Ametek’s California Instruments RS series high-power AC source, the RS1M is a 12-chassis setup that comprises four RS270 systems, each defined as three 90-kVA chassis. Each RS270 system is capable of generating 270 kVA of three-phase power at up to 692 VAC (L-L). Four control chassis allow ESIF engineers to remotely configure the entire platform as one 1-MVA, two 540-kVA, four separate 270-kVA, or one 810-kVA and one 270-kVA system. This capability gives ESIF the flexibility it needs to size the simulated power grid appropriately for the devices being tested and understand how different renewable energy technologies interact with each other in a distributed generation micro-grid.
Ametek Programmable Power, www.programmablepower.com