South Fork of Long Island (SFLI) is a high-density residential area facing power shortage in coming years. Due to large summer population, the electricity demand has a distinct seasonal pattern. The annual average power demand is 55 MW, however the summer month demand is 95 MW on average, reaching values as high as 140 MW for 10-20 hrs. In this project CIEES-UTS team is evaluating liquid salt (ZEBRA) batteries as an energy storage solution for South Fork region. ZEBRA batteries offer a low-cost energy storage that is better suited for an area with distinct seasonal energy demand. The battery normally operates at 300oC, when cooled to the ambient temperature it can be stored indefinitely. A battery farm would be activated for summer month only, thus requiring no off-season maintenance.
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Industry Projects
The Center for Integrated Electric Energy Systems is engaged in a variety of energy projects with our industrial partners, including Island Pyrochemical Energies Corporation, Unique Technical Services LLC, Energy IT Inc, ChemCubed LLC, ThermoLift Inc, National Grid
Principal Investigator: Dr. Yue Zhang
Industrial Partner: Sunrise Wind LLC and Orsted Corporation
This project addresses two of the most important challenges in offshore wind (OSW) energy integration into NYISO Zone K and I – onshore transmission upgrade and onshore grid stability – by developing comprehensive energy storage solutions.
(Left) Wind farm leases off the coast of Long Island. (Right) Rendering of the proposed wind farm off the Long Island coastOnshore grid transmission upgrade has been identified as the most challenging issue in OSW integration, not only for achieving the current OSW integration target but also even more so for the greater OSW goals in the long run. Existing studies on transmission upgrades in the NYISO territory have been simplified as wind energy forecast errors and system contingencies are ignored, whereas real-world power system operations in the presence of forecast errors and contingencies will encounter much more complex scenarios and potentially require a significantly higher need for transmission upgrade. In this project, the flexibility of energy storage will be exploited to absorb the OSW forecast errors and the system shocks due to contingencies and ultimately significantly reduce the need for transmission upgrade and the barrier to massive OSW integration in NYISO Zone K and I. The CIEES team investigates optimal energy storage placement, sizing, and operation strategies under realistic power system operation settings with massive OSW, and evaluates the value of storage in reducing the need for transmission upgrade and OSW curtailment. Another challenging issue with massive OSW is grid stability in the presence of a) rapid fluctuations of wind energy and b) reduced system inertia as fewer conventional synchronous generators are present. The team utilizes the fast control of energy storage, inverters and OSW wind turbines for stabilizing the voltage and frequency of the onshore grid. The deliverable is a hi-fidelity dynamic model and simulator of the Zone K and I with OSW and storage, and comprehensively evaluates the benefit of storage control in improving the onshore grid stability.
Principal Investigator: Professor Ben Hsiao
Industrial Partner: BAH Holdings LLC
Optical methane sensors developed by BAH HoldingsBAH Holdings is a startup developing optical sensing solutions for the petrochemical industry. The company is interested in developing a new generation of gas sensors using the mid-IR lasers and LED that are being researched in SBU's Electrical Engineering Department. The company extensively used CIEES facilities for testing the infrared methane sensor. BAH is entering a testing agreement with ConEd for pilot testing of 200 sensors in the New York City service area. CIEES team is assisting BAH with preparing sensor samples for the Gas Technology Institute validation, and in finding vendors for the pilot production of the 200 sensor units for the ConEd Field trials.
Additionally, the company is working with an established international supply of portable natural gas sensors on a joint development agreement that would allow BAH expansion into the portable gas sensing market. CIEES assisted BAH with the design of the optical system and validation of the sensor design.
Principal Investigator: Dr. Fang Luo
Industrial Partner: JetCool LLC
The project develops microconvective liquid cooling technology that uses arrays of fluid jets to cool the industry's highest power devices. Unlike typical heat sinks or cold plates that pass fluid over a surface, our cooling jets route fluid directly at the surface, creating an order-of-magnitude improvement in heat transfer. CIEES assisted the SBU team in setting up the experiment in the Advanced Energy Center.
Principal Investigator: Dr. Fang Luo
Industrial Partner: PowderMet Inc
These projects develop high resistance, high permeability and saturation, low coercivity magnetic cores for power conversion systems. The developed soft magnetic will benefit the current state-of-art of soft magnetic to allow designers to increase system power at high frequency while reducing the weight and size, also reducing (or, in some cases, even eliminating) the need for costly, large, and heavy cooling systems. The CIEES team assisted in calorimetric measurements of the magnetic alloys.
Principal Investigator: Dr. Devinder Mahajan
Industrial Partner: Danskammer Energy
Development of prototype gas negation unit at IGIT facilityThe project will realize the integration of the 5kW power demonstration unit. The CIEES team will determine additional markets and demand for Hydrogen supplies in the region/state that could be applicable to all parts of the nation. The team will identify, assess and evaluate the feasibility of Hydrogen suppliers for New York State to deliver fuel to transition from fossil fuels.
Principal Investigator: Dr. Devinder Mahajan
Industrial Partner: Consolidated Edison Company
Hydrogen storage units in Prof. Mahajan's labThe project studies the Hydrogen absorption/desorption kinetics in mixed metal hydrides on the Power to Gas unit. It is known that hydrogen storage in metal hydrides is one of the attractive approaches for storing gaseous hydrogen. One attractive class of metal hydride system, mixed metal alloys, shows high hydrogen storage capacity, rapid kinetics and a relatively long electrochemical charge-discharge cycle life. The excellent properties of alloy type hydrides alloys makes them promising for stationary hydrogen storage. CIIES team assisted IGIT in assembly and provided gas analysis equipment.
Principal Investigator: Dr. Simon Marcia
Industrial Partner: MEAN Technology LLCThe CIEES team will perform an environmental assessment of a recycling process for the platinum catalyst contained in the Membrane Electrode Assemblies of a polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell. During this study, four hydrometallurgical platinum recovery processes from cathode will be analyzed at a laboratory scale.
Principal Investigator: Dr. Devinder Mahajan
Industrial Partner: National Grid
The Institute of Gas Innovation and Technology (I-GIT) is a partnership between Advanced Energy Research and Technology Center (AERTC) and National Grid-USA. The IGIT team will demonstrate a power-to-gas (P2G) concept that will produce Hydrogen, store it in a 14-cylinder metal hydride rack and feed to run a 5kW fuel cell unit. The unit will be sited at AERTC as a demonstration unit to validate the P2G concept. CIEES assisted IGIT in assembly and evaluation of Fe-Ti hydrogen storage units.
Principal Investigator: Dr. Vyacheslav Solovyov
Industrial Partner: Bren-Tronics, Inc.
Long Island (LI) is a high-density residential area where a large number of renewable energy generation systems have been installed or are at the planning stage. Several Eastern LI load pockets: South Hampton, East Hampton and Montauk are facing summer power shortages due a high seasonal demand. For example, the average annual demand of the South Hampton load pocket is 55 MW, however the summer months can be as high as 140 MW for 10-20 hrs. Behind-the-meter energy storage, which we believe does not require a lengthy and expensive permitting process, can be rapidly deployed and help alleviate this demand with renewables.
BrenTronics and the CIEES team developed a behind-the-meter energy storage solution
by redesigning an existing 5 kWh, 48 V battery, currently offered by Bren-Tronics
to DoD customers. The unit complies with rigid MIL-Spec safety standards, thus this
solution is a good fit for residential behind-the-meter, on-premises installation
where fire, flood and electrical safety are very important. The flood safety is especially
relevant for neighborhoods in flood-prone coastal areas, such as the South Shore of
LI (as witnessed during SuperStorm Sandy). The market opportunity is estimated at
$20M annually, the main source of revenue being the installation and service of the
battery storage systems. Principle Investigator: Dr. Anurag Purwar
Industrial Partner: ThermoLift, Inc.
ThermoLift, based in Stony Brook, NY is developing a cold-climate, natural gas air-conditioner and heat pump technology that combines heating, air-conditioning, and water heating into a single appliance. It can provide a 30-50% reduction in building HVAC costs as well as associated reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Currently, Thermolift heat pumps are undergoing pilot testing in British Columbia, Canada, by the local utility, Fortis BC. Ten customers, five residential and five small commercial buildings, are testing a new natural gas heat pump technology for space and water heating. The ThermoLift heat pump provides space and water heating in one system and is reported to offer efficiencies as high as 160 percent. This pilot, the first in North America, will test the efficiency, reliability and customer acceptance of the technology. ThermoLift C.E.O., Paul Swartz, credits CIEES for providing expertise and assistance during the critical stages of technology development. The CIEES put together a team of scientists who performed thermodynamic analysis of the ThermoLift engine.
Principle Investigator: Dr. Sergey Suchalkin
Industrial Partner: BAH Holdings LLCA team of scientists and engineers at Stony Brook University is developing novel mid-IR optical elements for methane sensing. The sensing elements are manufactured by the advanced molecular beam epitaxy and tuned to optical absorption lines of methane. The technology enables sensors with ultra-low power consumption. Such sensors can operate on a single battery for 10 years. The CIEES team assisted BAH in testing the emitter efficiency at high temperatures using the environmental chamber at the Advanced Energy Center.
Optical sensing package designed for BAH Holdings methane sensors by SBU team.
Graduate students of the Electrical Engineering Department testing mid-IR optical elements.
Principle Investigator: Dr. Vyacheslav Solovyov
Industrial Partner: ChemCubed LLC
ChemCubed Scientist
operating an ink-jet printerChemCubed L.L.C. is a small business in the field of flexible electronics that finds multiple uses in energy, aerospace and automotive products. The company utilizes methods of additive manufacturing to manufacture composite materials with precisely controlled properties, such as hardness, tensile strength, elongation at break, Young's modulus, electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, flame retardancy, security (tagging), or a combination thereof. In various aspects, the methods can include printing amounts of two or more curable liquids from a multichannel piezo head device to form a layer that can be cured by applying a wavelength of light from a light source.
The CIEES team performed mechanical and structural tests of composite samples provided by ChemCubed, currently residing in AERTC, Stony Brook's R&D Park. Flexible electronics is a fast-growing area where Chem Cubed is well-positioned to take a lead. CIEES employed a post-doctoral research associate who performed the sample analysis using the equipment available at CIEES.
Principle Investigator: Dr. Vyacheslav Solovyov
Industrial Partner: StorEn Technologies
SBU interns testing a StorEn batteryStorEn is commercializing the vanadium flow battery (VFB) which is a rechargeable flow battery that employs vanadium ions in different oxidation states to store chemical potential energy. During this period, the CIEES team concluded testing of the unit. The unit was charged up to 100% of the stored energy capacity, 20 kWh, more than 100 times. The CIEES team confirmed the high round trip efficiency and charge retention of the battery. The battery demonstrated stable operation up to the maximum 5 kWh power.
Industrial Partner: ChemCubed, LLC
ChemCubed is developing and manufacturing inks and coatings for flexible electronics and printing.
Composite materials and methods of additive manufacturing are provided for producing the composite materials with precisely-controlled properties. Examples of properties that can be precisely controlled in the composite material can include the hardness, tensile strength, elongation at break, flame retardancy etc. In various aspects the methods can include printing amounts of two or more curable liquids from a multichannel piezo head device to form a layer that can be cured by applying a wavelength of light from a light source. Preparing and testing of these materials are needed for commercialization.
CIEES team works with ChemCubed on evaluation of the advanced composites using the equipment available at the CIEES facility and the Composite Center.
Industrial Partner: Energy IT, Inc
Energy IT is a small business developing predictive digital models for electric grid utilities.
The CIEES team, led by Prof. Eugene Feinberg, is developing a predictive digital model of electric grid.
The team will design and develop a meter and data management system that will be eventually integrated into the larger energy management system. The model will also include medium- and long-term load forecasting features, which use time-series analysis and/or methods of artificial neural networks, and integrate them into the previously developed short-term load forecasting system. During the project the team will also conduct research and development of fast service restoration models and algorithms for electric distribution systems, by integrating the fault detection and location models developed previously and integrate the developed models and algorithm into the existing energy management platform.
Industrial Partner: Unique Technical Services, LLC
Unique Technical Service (UTS) is a small business specializing in development of power electronics for hybrid vehicles and electrical grid.
Industrial Partner: Unique ThermoLift, Inc
ThermoLift is developing a cold-climate, natural gas air-conditioner and heat pump technology that combines heating, air-conditioning, and water heating into a single appliance.
This project will focus on studying thermodynamic and kinematic performance of the Vuilleumier natural-gas heat pump that developed by ThermoLift, Inc. The advantage of the ThermoLift design is that the same device can be used for both heating and cooling. By using natural gas, the device can take off load from the electrical grid during the summer months. ThermoLift uses expertise of SBU Department of Mechanical Engineering to model kinematic performance of the machine and identify the design improvements.
The improved machine can provide a 30-50% reduction in building HVAC costs as well as associated reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Industial Partner: National Grid
National Grid is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the world - covering Massachusetts, New York, Rhode Island and the UK. The company is delivering clean energy to support our world long into the future.
The CIEES team is evaluating market and technology for distributed energy generation using gas on Long Island. The goal is to estimate impact of renewable gas on Power Production on Long Island. Distributed natural gas generation is considered a viable option for relieving grid strain in congested load pockets, such as South and North Forks of Long Island. The natural gas generators, working in tandem with renewable energy sources, offer an economic alternative to chemical energy storage in some load pockets.
The CIEES team, led by Prof. Dr. Devinder Mahajan, Director of Institute of Gas Innovation and Technology (I-GIT), identified hybrid gas sources based off-grid technologies for distributed power production. Specifically, 20kW skid-mounted systems are the optimum solution for distributed power generation
Industial Partner: Island Pyrochemical Industries Corporation
Island Group Enterprises (IGE) is a Long Island chemical company. IGE develops specialty chemicals and polymers that use renewable feedstock.
The project is focused on synthesis of ethyl cellulose, as well as its characterization and applications as energy materials. The main objective of this project to optimize the reaction conditions to control the desire quality of ethyl cellulose. To this a team of scientist from SBU Department of Chemistry set up a high-pressure research reactor. The setup is now producing pilot quantities of Ethyl Cellulose from renewable and widely accessible natural cellulose.
These materials can be used for a wide range of energy applications, including propellants for rapidly developing private space launch industry. Another example application includes the development of polymers for solar holographic device, which is an electricity generator that uses inexhaustible and sustainable solar energy.
Federal and Not-for-Profit Grants
Principle Investigator: Dr. Vyacheslav Solovyov
Funding Agency: US Navy Office of Naval Research
The project addresses the need for effective management of high-voltage supercapacitive energy storage that would significantly improve resilience in a high-voltage microgrid subjected to pulsed loads and disruptions. The project will advance the high-voltage supercapacitor storage as a part of Fully Integrated Power and Energy Systems (IPES) of the near-future NAVY grids. The SBU team will work with the leading manufacturer of the state-of-the-art high voltage supercapacitor storage, Ioxus Inc. and the energy storage integrator, Unique Technical Services LLC (UTS), to evaluate the feasibility of achieving the NAVY target of 1 MW/m3 power density in the Energy Storage Cabinet geometry using Ioxus iMOD-series product.
Application of high-volume supercapacitor in microgridPrinciple Investigator: Dr. Benjamin Hsiao
Funding Agency: US Navy Office of Naval ResearchRemote military bases or communities can have a wide range of systems, spanning from the kW to GW, with different complexity and maturity. There is a lack of integrated "plug-and-play" mobile energy storage solutions that can be seamlessly integrated into a microgrid without compromising the grid power quality.
The popular microgrid management approach is droop control-based; the strategy inherited from the traditional electric grid, where stability is ensured by multiple synchronous generators operating at a 4-5% frequency droop. Absent inertia of large generators in an islanded microgrid requires intermediate energy storage systems to absorb or inject power through pre-determined or adaptably adjusted droop curves. However, under large load variations, such as shipboard electromagnetic weapon platforms and high-power electric vehicle chargers on forward bases, droop controllers are known to demonstrate poor damping performance.
Layout of the microgrid prototype. The arrows show dispatch communications. The left panel shows the BRENERGY 4850 Li-ion battery used in this study.The project uses a communication-based multi-agent approach using secure wired communication, CAN and RS-485. By inter-connecting the loads and generators within the microgrid, optimal energy dispatch can be realized through a look-ahead load prediction strategy. Under this scenario, a load controller will communicate the anticipated energy dispatch to the distributed energy resource (DER) and the energy storage unit. Here we use the most advanced in the internet of things (IoT) communication to demonstrate predictive energy dispatch of a Mil-spec energy storage (Bren-Tronics BRENERGY TM 4850 Li-ion storage), commercial out-of-shelf (COTS) inverter, under a variety of loads. The proposal team fully utilizes synergy between SBU's expertise in wireless communication and Bren-Tronics experience in supporting US warfighters with state-of-the-art energy solutions.
Principle Investigator: Dr. Peng Zhang
Funding Agency: US Department of Energy
This work will help communities maintain power during man-made or natural disasters and restore power after them, improve cybersecurity for PV inverters and power systems, and develop advanced hybrid plants that operate collaboratively with other resources for improved reliability and resilience. It will advance grid operations technologies and enable solar to provide more grid services—or enable grid operators to maintain system‐wide balance and manage electricity transmission. In addition, it will advance the cybersecurity of solar technologies to better detect disturbances and develop strategies to survive a cyberattack.
Principle Investigator: Dr. Peng Zhang
Funding Agency: US Navy Office of Naval ResearchThis project develops a deployable Three Lines of Defense model that integrates three of SBU's unique techniques – programmable active security scanning, encrypted control, software-defined microgrid controls (including push-sum-enabled distributed algorithms to enable unprecedentedly self-protecting, ultra-cyber-physical-resilient, and cognitive microgrids.
Principle Investigator: Dr. Fang Luo
Funding Agency: Board of Trustees of the University of Ilinois
Cryogenic testing of GaN modulesThe project will develop a cryogenic hydrogen fuel cell system for powering all-electric aircraft. The team will investigate the technology needed to produce a practical all-electric design to replace conventional fossil fuel propulsion systems.
Principle Investigator: Dr. Fang Luo
Funding Agency: National Science Foundation
The project provides a disruptive semiconductor-based active filtering method which could essentially replace passive filtering solutions that have been used for decades. The success of this project will not only significantly improve the power density and efficiency of future power electronic systems, but also change the design philosophy for electromagnetic emission mitigation in such systems. The proposed program integrates cutting-edge research with education, and thus, provides a platform to integrate STEM interdisciplinary knowledge together with hands-on activities with the focus on establishing a pipeline of STEM students in electrical engineering from pre-college to graduate level.
Principle Investigator: Dr. Yue Zhao
Funding Agency: National Science FoundationThis project will develop new machine learning algorithms, both leveraging and integrating with existing computational tools, to greatly improve the computational efficiency of solving challenging power system operation problems. We accomplish this by designing algorithms that use data to replace some of the existing heuristics based on human experience. We use a bottom-up approach by carefully formulating the problems to determine the best interface between the physical system and machine learning. This allows us to design algorithms that are aware of the physics of the problems and complement existing tools in the field.
Principle Investigator: Dr. Yue Zhao
Funding Agency: NYS Energy Research and Development Authority
The projects will develop an integrated suite of grid modernization metrics that leverage current industry practice and emerging industry additions (e.g. extreme event metrics from NERC) to develop new metrics that reflect emerging grid attributes and architectures, conduct baseline modernization assessments and provide an ongoing dashboard for policy makers, regulators and industry stakeholders.
Dr. Yue Zhao and his teamPrinciple Investigator: Dr. Yue Zhao
Funding Agency: National Science FoundationThe innovation of the project lies in integrating Internet of Things technologies, software-defined networking and real-time computing to establish a scalable SD2N architecture.
Principle Investigator: Dr. Peng Zhang
Funding Agency: National Science FoundationThe research project creates and implements networked microgrids solutions on a novel cyberinfrastructure to ensure distribution grid resiliency. This cyber infrastructure is based on Software-Defined Networking. Specifically, the project has three main objectives: (1) To establish a formal analysis method to tractably assess networked microgrid stability; (2) To devise a new concept of microgrid active fault management (AFM) enabled through online distributed optimization; and (3) To build a Software-Defined Networking (SDN) based architecture to enable highly resilient networked microgrids.
Principle Investigator: Dr. Peng Zhang
Funding Agency: National Science FoundationThe main objective of this project is to create smart programmable microgrids (SPMs). Our key innovation is to virtualize microgrid functions, making them software-defined and hardware-independent, so that converting distributed energy resources (DERs)to community microgrids becomes affordable, autonomic, and secure. To achieve our main objective, our team will: 1) Architect a programmable microgrid platform for virtualizing traditionally hardware-dependent microgrid functions as flexible software services, fully resolving hardware dependence issues and enabling unprecedented low costs; 2) Pioneer a concept of software-defined operation optimization for microgrids, where operation objectives, grid connection, and DER participations will be defined by software and plug-and-play, and can be quickly reconfigured, based on the development of modularized and tightened models and a novel asynchronous price-based decomposition-and-coordination method; 3) Devise a software-defined distributed formal analysis for online stability assessment under heterogeneous uncertainties and plug-and-play of microgrid components or microgrids; 4) Develop a real-time-learning-based cybersecurity function to protect SPMs against power bot attacks; and 5) Enable anaerobic-biomass-digesters (ADs) as environmentally friendly and dispatchable DERs by virtualizing the dispatch and control of ADs in SPM. The proposed SPM will be demonstrated on a Connecticut community microgrid through a recently built cyber-physical testbed.
Principle Investigator: Dr. Yue Zhao
Funding Agency: National Science FoundationThis project will develop new machine learning algorithms, both leveraging and integrating with existing computational tools, to greatly improve the computational efficiency of solving challenging power system operation problems. We accomplish this by designing algorithms that use data to replace some of the existing heuristics based on the human experience. We use a bottom-up approach by carefully formulating the problems to determine the best interface between the physical system and machine learning. This allows us to design algorithms that are aware of the physics of the problems and complement existing tools in the field
Principle Investigator: Dr. Peng Zhang
Funding Agency: National Science FoundationThe innovation of the project lies in integrating Internet of Things technologies, software-defined networking and real-time computing to establish a scalable SD2N architecture.
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