GridBridge, Inc — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 10a

Description

The electrical distribution network is facing new challenges outside of its original design: accommodating DC-based devices, orchestrating significant power variability, offering notable efficiency gains, isolating outages, and dealing with increased penetration of distributed generation such as residential solar. GridBridge, a developer and manufacturer of revolutionary power delivery systems for critical grid applications, is partnering with Cree, a leader in the development of high-power SiC transistors, to develop a 12 kV, 100 kW, three-phase, bidirectional, grid-tied, energy storage system that will facilitate the value of renewables, provide flexibility, maintain grid power quality, and improve asset utilization. These needs will be addressed by redesigning GridBridges existing Grid Energy Router GER) from a single phase 240/110V, 50 kW system, fabricated using silicon topology to a 12.47 kV, 100 kW system by incorporating recent breakthrough 3rd generation 10 kV Cree SiC-based MOSFETs which are up to 40% more cost effective than previous versions. The benefits to utilities will be through significantly improved GER system capabilities in combination with the addition of an Energy Storage capability GER-ES), which will allow utilities to address many issues, including the high penetration of renewable energy such as roof-top solar. The team proposes to design and evaluate through simulation, a modular transformerless, 100 kW battery energy storage system that can directly interface with the 12.47 kV, three phase, AC grid. This GER-ES will utilize advanced SiC power devices from Cree and other vendors and be optimized to support the current GER modular structure for bidirectional power flow control. The switching frequency, modulation scheme and thermal management will be carefully studied and designed to achieved convection cooling, so that the overall power density will be significantly higher >>2X) than that of today's transformer interfaced, silicon based battery storage systems. An Advanced Battery management System BMS) will also be modularized and implemented in the modular GER-ES system, so overall system reliability is improved through redundancy and modular design. This proposed system will be the most advanced and worlds first solution that addresses all major power management issues in the realization of the Smart Grid.