Development of a Testing Station for Grid-Interactive Smart Inverter Systems

As renewable energy penetration increases within the electrical power grid, flexible power is required to ensure reliability. Reliability can be jeopardized by the fluctuation and non-dispatch ability of renewable generators. This instability is caused by an imbalance between the amount of power produced and the amount of power consumed. Grid-enabled battery inverter systems are considered a solution to offset voltage and frequency fluctuations, which arise due to this power imbalance. The objective of this work is to develop a system for testing grid-enabled inverters. These inverters use one or more communication standards to control their interactions with the grid. This testing system verifies BIS functionality before utilities deploy them to provide grid services. The system contains three portions. One is the hardware components of the system. Next is the information exchange using communication protocols. The third is the testing procedures that check if the BIS does what is expected when it receives control commands