Southern California Edison

About: Southern California Edison is a based out in . It is known for research contribution in the topics: Electric power system & Distributed generation. The organization has 462 authors who have published 467 publications receiving 9835 citations. The organization is also known as: SCE & Southern California Edison Company.

Method of communicating between a utility and its customer locations

Abstract: A method for communicating between a utility and individual customer locations includes the step of communicating between the utility and customers and between the utility and customer equipment located at each individual customer location via the Internet or via an advanced utility meter. The method of communicating typically includes the additional steps of providing each individual customer location with an advanced utility meter and using each individual utility meter to communicate between the utility and the advanced utility meter, to communicate between the advanced utility meter and the individual customers and to communicate between the advanced utility meter and equipment locator and each individual customer location.

Optimal inverter VAR control in distribution systems with high PV penetration

Abstract: The intent of the study detailed in this paper is to demonstrate the benefits of inverter var control on a fast timescale to mitigate rapid and large voltage fluctuations due to the high penetration of photovoltaic generation and the resulting reverse power flow. Our approach is to formulate the volt/var control as a radial optimal power flow (OPF) problem to minimize line losses and energy consumption, subject to constraints on voltage magnitudes. An efficient solution to the radial OPF problem is presented and used to study the structure of optimal inverter var injection and the net benefits, taking into account the additional cost of inverter losses when operating at non-unity power factor. This paper will illustrate how, depending on the circuit topology and its loading condition, the inverter's optimal reactive power injection is not necessarily monotone with respect to their real power output. The results are demonstrated on a distribution feeder on the Southern California Edison system that has a very light load and a 5 MW photovoltaic (PV) system installed away from the substation.

Physical and chemical properties of fly ash from coal-fired power plants with reference to environmental impacts

Abstract: Interest in coal residue research has recently been increased with anticipated increased dependence on coal as a source of energy. United States coal reserves are estimated at 3.6 trillion metric tons, from which 396 billion metric tons can economically be mined (Swanson et al. 1976). United States electric power utilities consume from 60 to 65% of the amount of coal produced (Brackett 1973). In 1974, the power industry utilized approximately 400 million tons of coal (Ash at Work 1975). The magnitude of trace element mobilization into the environment from fossil-fuels is substantial and is comparable to that originating from major sedimentary cycles such as river flows and natural sediments (Bertine and Goldberg 1971). Consequently, increasing regulatory measures have been imposed on power industries by federal and local authorities restricting the amount of coal residue entering the atmosphere.

Inverter VAR control for distribution systems with renewables

Abstract: Motivated by the need to cope with rapid and random fluctuations of renewable generation, we presents a model that augments the traditional Volt/VAR control through switched controllers on a slow timescale with inverter control on a fast timescale. The optimization problem is generally nonconvex and therefore hard to solve. We propose a simple convex relaxation and prove that it is exact provided over-satisfaction of load is allowed. Hence Volt/VAR control over radial networks is efficiently solvable. Simulations of a real-world distribution circuit illustrates that the proposed inverter control achieves significant improvement over the IEEE 1547 standard in terms of power quality and power savings.

Distribution System Restoration With Microgrids Using Spanning Tree Search

Abstract: Distribution system restoration (DSR) is aimed at restoring loads after a fault by altering the topological structure of the distribution network while meeting electrical and operational constraints. The emerging microgrids embedded in distribution systems enhance the self-healing capability and allow distribution systems to recover faster in the event of an outage. This paper presents a graph-theoretic DSR strategy incorporating microgrids that maximizes the restored load and minimizes the number of switching operations. Spanning tree search algorithms are applied to find the candidate restoration strategies by modeling microgrids as virtual feeders and representing the distribution system as a spanning tree. Unbalanced three-phase power flow is performed to ensure that the proposed system topology satisfies all operational constraints. Simulation results based on a modified IEEE 37-node system and a 1069-node distribution system demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.