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Renewable Electricity for Minnesota’s Future

Xcel Renewable Development FundAdvisory Group Presentation

December 12, 2017

Project funding provided by customers of Xcel Energy through a grant from the

Renewable Development Fund

Agenda

• REMnF Project Overview

• Project Presentations

• Questions

Impact• 20 articles published or under review in scientific journals

o 12 in 2017

• 37 presentations nationally and internationallyo 27 in 2017

• 2 patents filedo 1 in 2017

• 27 people employedo 16 student RAs, 5 post-docs, 5 PIs

• Commercialization Effortso Value Design Proposition Workshop through the Office of Technology

Commercialization

Funding

Total Budget Total

Disbursed

Expenses Encumbrances Unencumbered

Expenses

Total

Expenses

$3,000,000 $3,000,000 $846,594 $230,739 $615,855 $1,077,333

Project Funding Start Date: 5/30/2016

Advisory Board

Renewable Electricity for Minnesota’s Future

First Name Last Name Position Organization

Nina Axelson Vice-President, Public Relations Ever-green Energy

Bill BlazarSenior Vice-President of Public Affairs

and Business Development MN Chamber of Commerce

Dan King Program Director Midwest Renewable Energy Tracking System

J. Drake Hamilton Science Policy Director Fresh Energy

Paul LehmanManager of Community Energy

Partnerships Xcel Energy

Laureen Ross-McCalibManager, Resource Planning and

Regulatory Affairs Great River Energy

Rolf Nordstrom President and CEO Great Plains Institute

Kelly Schwinghammer Executive Vice-President BlueGreen Alliance

Will Seuffert Executive Director Environmental Quality Board

Doug Shoemaker Vice-Chairperson MN Renewable Energy Society

Kaya Tarhan Chief Development Officer SolarStone

David Russick Founder Gopher Angels

Projects

• Richard James & Bharat Jalan: The direct conversion of heat to

electricity using fast switching of ferroelectric oxides

• Chris Leighton: Pyrite FeS2: A Low-Cost Earth-Abundant Photovoltaic

Solution for Renewable Electricity in Minnesota

• Lian Shen: Simulation, Measurement, Modeling, and Control of Wind

Plant Power

• Ned Mohan: Research on Power Electronics and Control: Grid-

Interface for Renewables, Storage and Green Micro-Grids

University of Minnesota

Driven To Discover

Introduction

Senior Personnel

The direct conversion of heat to electricity using fast switching

of ferroelectric oxides

Prof. Richard James, Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics, UMN

Prof. Bharat Jalan, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science, UMN

Post Doctoral Fellows

Graduate Students

Dr. Ryan Haislaier, PhD from Penn State, December 2016 – December 2017 (to Intel)

Dr. Paul Plucinsky, PhD from Caltech, September 2017 – present

Dr. Ashley Bucsek, PhD from Colorado School of Mines, starts on January 2018

Ms. Hanlin Gu, 4th year

Mr. William Nunn, 3rd year

Supported by Xcel Energy - Renewable Development Fund


Driven To Discover

Sources of heat at small temperature difference

n Waste heat rejected in exhaust systems of automobiles, and power plants

n Waste heat from air conditioning systems*

n Waste heat from laptop and desktop computers and

supercomputer clusters

n Handheld electronic devices (phones, videogames),

watches, stand-alone sensors

n Major environmental sources: solar thermal plants, temperature difference between

air and sub-ice water in winter, accumulate heat in attics in summer

*Collaboration with Daikin Applied, 13600 Industrial Park Blvd., Plymouth, MN

A strategy for

minimizing

hysteresis

(λ2 to 1). Near

zero hysteresis

demonstrated

Key technological breakthrough

Thin film

devices:

chip level

integration


Driven To Discover

Objectives and progress

To develop energy conversion devices based on phase transformation in ferroelectric films

through the establishment of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth and the computational

design.

Key Idea:

Deliverables• Development of an Oxide Film with a λ2 = 1 Interface

• Development of a Switch

• Modeling of Thermo-Electro-Dynamics of Ferroelectric Energy Conversion

• Construction and Testing of a Prototype

• Scale-up

No separate

electrical generator:

the material itself

generates electricity

Achievements 2017:

MBE growth of high quality ferroelectric films achieved

Phase pure epitaxial BaTiO3 film on SrTiO3 (001) substrate

Smooth surface morphology from the atomic force microscopy

Development of a predictive model of ferroelectric energy conversion

Demonstration of ferroelectric energy conversion

Demonstration: voltage (blue) temperature (red)


Driven To Discover

Outreach and plans

X-ray data from high quality ferroelectric

BaTiO3 film made using hybrid MBEPlans for the coming year

n Develop demonstration using grown BaTiO3 films

n Do extensive predictions using the recently developed computational model to guide device design

n Develop next generation demonstration using recently grown high quality films

n Continue intellectual property development with OTC

n Investigate the design and development of a thermal switch

Intellectual property and commercialization

n Early Commercial Assessment and literature search

done by OTC (ROI20160206, Avishek Mishra, Xu Zou)

n Provisional patent filed (20170206): The direct conversion

of heat to electricity using phase transformations in

ferroelectric oxides

n Marketing webpage developed by outside firm

n Graduate student Hanlin Gu took the Minnesota Innovation Corps

Course on Value Design Workshop, and contacted local companies

n Widely distributed publicity on our method (James gave Golden

Medallion Lecture in CSE, Timoshenko Lecture at Stanford; Jalan

gave technical lecture on heat recovery at ARPA-E)

Pyrite FeS2: A Low-Cost Earth-Abundant Photovoltaic (PV)Solution for Renewable Electricity in Minnesota

Xcel Energy RDF ProjectUniversity of Minnesota, Institute on the Environment

Prof. Chris Leighton, Prof. Eray AydilDepartment of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science

Prof. Laura GagliardiDepartment of Chemistry

Partners: (tenK Solar Inc.), Physical Electronics Inc.

Project Team

Chris Leighton(Chem. Eng. & Mat. Sci.)

electronic materials

Laura Gagliardi(Chemistry)

theoretical chemistry

Eray Aydil(Chem. Eng. & Mat. Sci.)

solar cells

(TenK Solar: Bloomington-based commercial solar installation company)

PHI (Physical Electronics): Eden-Prairie-based materials analysis company

Background / Motivation

Current PV market: Si, CdTe, CuInGaSe2 (CIGS)

Si builds on established technology, but requires costly, thick, crystalline wafers

CdTe and CIGS are thin film technologies, but require low abundance, toxic, costly elements

Grand challenge: High performance PV materials from earth-abundant, cheap, non-toxic constituents; wide-scale deployment of solar-to-electric power

The semiconductor FeS2 (pyrite, fool’s gold (!)) is a high-potential candidate:

> Outstanding abundance and cost> Extraordinary light absorption> Theoretical efficiency > 30 %> Current record: 2.8 %!!

GOAL: Remove barriers to FeS2 usage in solar cells

Progress Two known problems with FeS2:

> Doping uncontrolled, poorly understood

> Surfaces uncontrolled, poorly understood

Doping progress:

> First to resolve the “doping puzzle” in FeS2

(why are large crystals “n” and thin films “p”?)

> First to prove missing S atoms dope “n”

Surface progress:

> First comprehensive understanding of surfaceconduction

Significance:

> We can controllably “n”-dope. This is a world “first”

> We now have a route to the first “p-n homojunction” solar cell (see figure)

> Simplest route to an FeS2 solar cell (like Si); never previously possible

Upcoming publications

> Proof that missing S atoms “n”-dope FeS2

> Accompanying theoretical analysis

Develop a “p”-dopant:

> Mn, As, etc. being studied

> Alternative idea: P (see figure)

Proof-of-principle p-n homojunction solar cell:

> Single crystal; ion implantation

Thin film p-n homojunction solar cell

> Intellectual property

> Sputtered n,p films

> Sputtered solar cells

Future Plans

Research ProductsPublications:

Presentations: Bryan Voigt, Materials Research Society Fall Meeting, Nov 2017

Eray Aydil, 3M Technical Forum, June 2017Bryan Voigt, U of M IPRIME Annual Meeting, May 2017 Chris Leighton, Materials Research Society Spring Meeting, April 2017All participants, External Advisory Board Meeting, Jan 2017

Industrial Interactions: Extensive interactions with PHI (Physical Electronics, Eden Prairie)

> Scientific collaboration> Free access to unique instrumentation

Voigt, Moore, Manno, Walter, Aydil and Leighton, in preparation (2017)Ray, Voigt, Walter, Aydil, Leighton and Gagliardi, in preparation (2017)

ST. ANTHONY FALLS LABORATORYST. ANTHONY FALLS LABORATORY

SIMULATION, MEASUREMENT, MODELING, AND CONTROL

OF WIND PLANT POWER

Lian Shen – Director of St. Anthony Falls Laboratory (SAFL)Professor of Mechanical Engineering

Michele Guala – Associate Professor of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering and SAFL

Jiarong Hong – Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and SAFL

Jeff Marr – Associate Director for Engineering and Facility of SAFL

Joseph Nichols – Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics

Peter Seiler – Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics and SAFL

ST. ANTHONY FALLS LABORATORY

Project Overview

MotivationMajor roadblock to wind energy realizing its transformative potential: • Inherently variable nature of the wind; and • The associated challenges in integrating wind

resources within the power grid.

Goal• Predict and control wind plant power output

High fidelity simulations of wind plants

Dynamic reduced-order modeling of

flows in wind plants

Active power control to minimize variability in power

output of wind plants

Measurement in

SAFL wind tunnel

Measurements in EOLOS

and other stations


Velocity Field and Coherent Structures in the Near Wake of a Utility-scale Wind Turbine

Mechanical Engineering & Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory, University of Minnesota

130 m


Plan for the Next Year

1) High-fidelity wind plant simulations on extreme-scale supercomputers to predict wind plant performance and reliability at unprecedented levels of spatial and temporal resolution;

2) Validation of simulation through measurements in wind tunnel experiments with miniature turbines (wake interactions), and utility-scale wind turbine experiments (wake evolution at realistic Reynolds numbers) in the field;

3) Physics-based, dynamic reduced-order modeling informed by big data generated from numerical simulation and experiment measurement to enable accurate and efficient real-time forecasting; and

4) Development of an active power control strategy to minimize the variability of the power output of wind plants.

RDF Progress Summary

2017

Prof. Ned Mohan and Prof. Murti Salapaka

ECE, University of Minnesota

Overall Research focus

Enable integration of renewables into the grid using

Power Electronics. Key Focus Areas:

1. High-Power Multilevel Topologies for Utility scale

applications

2. Low-Power Topologies for domestic applications

3. Control schemes for advanced grid support features

~700V34.5 kV

10-20

kHz5-60 Hz60 Hz

• High-power interface for utility-

scale wind turbines

– Megawatt scale

– Output to MV level (34.5kV)

• Uses Modular Multilevel

Converters (MMCs)

– Modular design

– Fault tolerant operation

– High performance (low harmonic

distortion in output

– Higher efficiency

• Eliminates line-frequency

transformers

– Uses high frequency magnetics

– Compact, lightweight system

– Lower total cost

1. High Power Application

(Virtual)Lg

Progress Summary• Completed:

– New modulation scheme using double fourier

analysis for back-to-back operation (Presented at

NAPS, Sept 2017)

• In Progress:

– Real-time model development on OpalRT

– Inertial mode control and grid support functions

• Future Work:

– Model Validation

– Fault-ride-through and reactive power support.


• Low voltage domestic rooftop

solar interface

– Kilowatt scale

– Output to mains voltage (120VAC)

• Uses Integrated Magnetics and

coupled inductors

– Small size, compact design

– Low ripple in currents to improve

efficiency

– Wide bandgap devices for high

switching frequency and low loss

• Integrated Super-Capacitors for

short term energy storage

2. Low Power Applications

Integrated Magnetics based converter for Low Voltage (Domestic) applications

Progress Summary• Completed:

– Analytical modelling for Cuk-derived topologies

• In Progress:– Development of ultra-low ripple scheme

– Modelling and design of coupled magnetics based

converter

• Future Work:– Lab-scale hardware prototype


A Net load aggregation algorithm is

being developed to enable:

• Real time Implementation

• Low cost, distributed computational

devices

• Utilization of available and functional

part of the grid in case of a grid

destabilization event to support

critical loads / infrastructure

• Dispatching renewable generation in

a flexible manner

• Prioritization of available renewable

energy sources in the network.

3. Modelling and Control

Net Load Aggregation of Multiple Units

Sudden Grid

Destabilization

Event

• Interfacing of renewable generation

with non linear loads pose

challenges of large current total

harmonic distortion (THD) and

circulating currents.

• Virtual impedance shaping

methods are implemented to improve

THD and reduce circulating currents.

• Experimental validation to be

performed with 600 W inverters and

non-linear electronic loads.


Interfacing of low inertia DERs

Fig. Interface of two Inverter system

LIS : Local Inverter System


Interfacing of low inertia DERs: Results

Fig. Simulation studies for alleviating circulating current and improving THD

in presence of non-linear loads

Fig. (a) THD of 24.95% for grid current with non-linear

(b) THD reduction to 9.95% of grid current with virtual

impedance shaping

(a)

(b)

QUESTIONS?Lewis Gilbert – Managing Director / COO

[email protected]

Christov Churchward – Program Manager

[email protected]

environment.umn.edu

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