Modernizing America's electricity infrastructure is one of the U.S. Department of Energy's top priorities. The DOE Strategic Plan (PDF xx MB) states that today's electric grid needs to be more efficient, reliable, and secure. A modern, smarter electric grid may save consumers money, help our economy run more efficiently, allow rapid growth in renewable energy sources, and enhance energy reliability. The Department's research into a variety of tools that will improve advanced system monitoring, visualization, control, operations, and market structure will ultimately modernize the electricity transmission infrastructure to ease congestion, allow for increases in demand, and provide a greater degree of security.
The Transmission Reliability research area focuses on two key areas: (1) real-time grid reliability management and (2) reliability and markets. The first area develops monitoring and analysis tools that process synchrophasor data to enable real-time assessment of grid status and stability margins, with the goal of improving power system reliability and visibility through wide-area measurement and control. It is developing advanced technologies and tools to help create a resilient electric transmission system that can better detect disturbances, accommodate a variety of generation sources, and automatically reconfigure the grid to prevent widespread outages and/or rebalance the system. The second area focuses on developing a comprehensive set of integrated market and engineering design principles, tools, and technologies, including load as a resource, to support efficient, competitive electricity markets. These activities include modeling and simulating market rules, developing new computational methods, and performing real-time analysis of market behavior and its impact on market performance.
The Transmission Reliability research area also coordinates research, development, and demonstration activities with regional agencies such as independent system operators, regional transmission groups, and multistate, vertically integrated power companies; the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; the North American Electric Reliability Corporation; the Electric Power Research Institute; equipment manufacturers; and trade groups.
Peer Reviews
- 2010 Transmission Reliability Peer Review project presentations and project summaries
- 2010 Transmission Reliability Peer Review Report
- 2008 Visualization and Controls Peer Review
Publications
- National Transmission Grid Study (PDF 2.0 MB)
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