Lab Research Area: Grid Integration & Energy Efficiency
Main Areas of Research
- Renewable Energy Integration;
- Advanced Grid Technologies;
- Energy Storage Solutions;
- System Analysis and Simulation; and
- Policy and Economic Analysis
For more information on this research, visit the GridSTART Research Overview page.
Lab Information and Equipment
The Advanced Power System Laboratory (APSL) is highly flexible and is the first of its kind in Hawai‘i — able to test AC and DC equipment, systems, and microgrids within a representative and tightly controlled electrical environment. Major components of the lab include a 35.3 kW rooftop PV system connected to four advanced PV inverters equipped with grid support functions serving three AC/DC equipment test bays. The architecture also includes a real-time grid simulator connected to a 30 kVA power amplifier. This power hardware-in-the-loop (PHIL) configuration can evaluate electrical power equipment as units under test (UUTs) in a real-time simulated grid environment. This architecture is shown in the figure below:
The lab includes three modular test bays that can be used to evaluate the advanced functions, communications, and controls of various UUTs such as:
- Advanced function PV inverters;
- EV chargers, including vehicle-to-grid (V2G), vehicle-to-home (V2H) enabled chargers;
- Battery energy storage systems (BESS);
- Power monitoring and edge computing device;
- AC or DC loads/appliances and load control devices; and
- Voltage management devices.
Each of the three test bays are equipped with outlets rated at different voltages (3Φ 208Y/120 V grid-tied, 1Φ 240/120 V grid-tied, 3Φ 0~520 VLL Grid Simulator, and 600 VDC off-grid).
The AC test beds provide access to the following three AC test buses:
- 1Φ/3Φ 0~520 VLL AC grid simulator bus served by the Chroma 61830 grid simulator;
- 3Φ 208Y/120 V AC bus served by a 225kVA transformer; and
- 1Φ 240/120 V AC bus served by a 100kVA transformer.
