A cutting-edge testing facility for industry, utility, and academic partners
The modern power grid faces significant challenges, including climate change, electrification, and the integration of intermittent renewables. To address these challenges, innovative testbeds like DERConnect are crucial. Located at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and funded by the National Science Foundation, DERConnect is an advanced testing facility that provides a platform for experimentation and testing in a fully integrated programmable grid environment, featuring a diverse set of controllable resources such as energy storage, electric vehicles, solar/PV, and building loads. By leveraging this unique setup, DERConnect accelerates the development of a more decentralized, resilient, and sustainable energy system.
Evaluate and validate technologies to meet your resiliency, reliability, and economic goals. Our real-time simulators coupled with real power systems and over 2,000 controllable devices on the UCSD campus, provide unparalelled scale and diversity for testing.
Put your hardware through its paces. The testbed is highly configurable, allowing your hardware to operate under a range of rigorous testing scenarios. Gain valuable insights before running costly pilots or other field deployments.
Test your software with real, controllable assets including over 2,000 devices across the UCSD campus, our living laboratory. Additionally, DERConnect offers a suite of software tools including FLISR, Load Flexibility Calculation, and Hosting Capacity.
Partner with UCSD, a leading research institution. The DERConnect collaborates with academic, government, and business partners on grant proposals and other research opportunities. Tap into a wealth of knowledge and expertise found in our faculty, graduate students, and staff.
Our DERMS platform has built-in tools such as FLISR, hosting capacity, and load flexibility calculators as well as the ability to develop and run custom tools. Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) are decentralized energy systems that aggregate and optimize the output of multiple distributed energy resources (DERs), such as solar, energy storage, and demand response assets, to provide a reliable and flexible source of power to the grid.
The testbed is equipped with a real-time simulator that is capable of simulating large distribution or transmission networks or high-fidelity models of DER systems. The ability for the simulations to run in real-time enables real power systems to interact with the simulations through our amplifier.
Users can bring hardware to the testbed and connect it for testing and validation. Hardware can operate alongside real-time simulations through our amplifier and with real power systems onsite such as the batteries, ultra-capacitor, and Typhoon HIL system to run tests with real controllers.
The testbed can simulate and analyze the performance of large data centers and their impact on the grid, including load management and energy efficiency strategies.
The testbed is equipped with over 2,000 edge computing nodes and controllable devices as well as a testing environment for the deployment and testing of decentralized control algorithms.
High-quality data is available for training and testing machine learning and AI algorithms. The testbed can be used to evaluate the performance of these algorithms in real-time, including their ability to predict system behavior, optimize control strategies, and improve system reliability.
The reliability of DER systems can be tested under various attack scenarios, including denial of service attacks, data tampering, and other cyber threats. The testbed can also be used to evaluate the performance of cybersecurity solutions in real-time, including intrusion detection and prevention systems, secure communication protocols, and other security measures.
Tap into the knowledge and expertise of DERConnect's team for consulting and research projects. We can help you with your research projects, including data collection, analysis, and simulation. We can also provide consulting services to help you with your DER projects, including system design, testing, and validation.
DERConnect provides training and educational materials for students and professionals to gain hands-on experience with DER technologies and applications. For example, participants can learn how to operate our real time simulators or learn power system fundamentals through our projects-in-a-box.
DERConnect will encompass more than 2,500 distributed energy resources on the campus microgrid, including fuel cell and solar panels, various building types (e.g. classroom vs office buildings), and electric vehicle charging stations. It will also involve the construction of an energy storage integration lab.
In addition, the testbed will be designed to allow different testing options and parameters, including an 'islanded' mode, cybersecurity tests, and plug-and-play options.
As an integrated power grid, DERConnect encompasses a diverse user base (e.g. office buildings, parking structures). From a social science perspective, the testbed will enable research focusing on how interrelated variables (e.g. cost, energy savings, and comfort) impact user choices.
Find your use case with our experts to learn how we can help you.
