POWER February 2021 - 35

SMART GRID
Nanogrid Could Hold Key to
Clean Energy Future
The Orlando Utilities Commission's (OUC's) vision of a green energy future isn't as
far off as some people may think. The utility's nanogrid is providing a testing ground
for several innovative power systems.
Mike Boslet
A
t OUC's Gardenia Operations Center
sits one square acre of outdoor
space dedicated to the study of
novel clean energy technologies. The
nanogrid is a living laboratory of emerging
energy assets that could help the
utility meet its 2050 goal of net-zero
CO2
emissions, with interim emissions
reductions of 50% by 2030 and 75%
by 2040 from 2005 levels. Managed by
OUC's Emerging Technologies (ET) team,
the nanogrid is made up of:
■ A floating solar array, which recently
was expanded to 64 kW of capacity
from 31 kW.
■ Three electric vehicle (EV) chargers, including
one with vehicle-to-grid (V2G)
capability.
■ Two vanadium redox flow (VRF) batteries,
which are used to store and dispatch
energy.
■ Two trailers with hydrogen storage
tanks-the latest addition to the test site.
Of the diverse components being
tested, Sam Choi, manager of Emerging
Technologies and Renewables, and Justin
Kramer, supervisor of Emerging Technologies,
believe hydrogen technology has the
potential to revolutionize the energy industry
(Figure 1). In 2019, OUC was part of a
team that received a $9 million grant from
the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to
study the production, storage, and transport
of hydrogen for the dispatching of
electricity or as transportation fuel. OUC is
one of only a few utilities in the U.S. exploring
hydrogen's potential as a panacea
to the challenges of decarbonizing the grid.
" Its only byproducts are water vapor,
heat, and energy, " said Kramer, explaining
the benefits of using hydrogen as a
renewable energy source.
At the nanogrid, hydrogen will be
produced using a polymer electrolyte
membrane (PEM)-based electrolyzer,
which is expected to arrive in mid-2021.
Connected to a solar array floating on a
nearby pond, the electrolyzer performs
February 2021 | POWER
1. Justin Kramer (left) and Sam Choi (right) stand beside the Orlando Utilities Commission's
(OUC's) latest addition to its nanogrid-one of two hydrogen storage trailers. Courtesy: OUC
electrolysis, using electricity to split water
into hydrogen and oxygen. The result will
be " green hydrogen, " so named because
it is produced using renewable energy
and, in the process, yields zero carbon
emissions. Funneled through a compressor,
the hydrogen will be stored in carbonfiber
cylinders stacked in the two trailers.
Paired with fuel cells, which also will arrive
in 2021, hydrogen is converted into highly efficient,
clean and quiet energy. Choi said one
of the two fuel cells his team will test will
be situated on a trailer " so we can actually
dispatch it with the hydrogen storage tanks
and use it as a potential backup power solution,
such as for a commercial customer or a
pump station hit by an outage. "
The day could come when electrolyzers
and fuel cells, and other distributed
energy resources like solar and battery
storage, are spread across OUC's service
territory as rapid-response systems used
to help balance renewable generation and
consumption. Choi likened such a scenario
to setting up a " virtual power plant. "
" One of the key research concepts of
this project is the electrolyzer, " said Choi.
" While you're producing hydrogen, you
can ramp up and down that unit to mitigate
the fluctuations of solar. " And when
the sun isn't shining, hydrogen offers the
best option for backing up solar farms,
or any renewable power system for that
matter, with long-duration energy storage.
Choi and Kramer believe hydrogenpowered
energy technology is on the
verge of a breakthrough, and OUC is on
www.powermag.com
the leading edge of it. " The DOE funded
only two utilities to do hydrogen research,
and we're one of them, " said Choi.
OUC is funding all other elements of
the nanogrid by itself. Data is being collected
on the VRF batteries, which offer
longer-lasting energy storage capacity
than lithium-ion batteries, and a highspeed
V2G EV charger that's capable of
pulling power from an EV. The latter experiment
is researching the possibility of
EVs being used as battery power sources
to augment the grid or power homes
in times of outages.
Another tool the ET team will study this
year is a flywheel energy storage system.
It converts mechanical energy into electricity
and could be used to store and dispatch
power generated by solar. " As we
transition to cleaner fuel sources that are
less reliable, we need tools to make them
more reliable; that's the whole point of
the nanogrid, " said Kramer.
Also under development in collaboration
with the University of Central Florida
(UCF) are controllers, which Kramer called
" the brains behind the operation. " Professors
and doctoral students with UCF's
College of Engineering and Computer
Science are working with the ET team on
this project. " UCF gives us access to so
many smart, talented people always willing
to help transition Central Florida to
cleaner, greener energy, " said Kramer. ■
-Mike Boslet is senior
communications consultant with the
Orlando Utilities Commission (OUC).
35

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POWER February 2021

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