Expanding Standards and Developing Tools to Enable DNP3 Support of Energy Storage Use Cases
Open-source tools to easily adopt DNP3 for communication and controls of DERs.
Electric Power Research Institute, Inc.
Recipient
Palo Alto, CA
Recipient Location
13th
Senate District
23rd
Assembly District
$871,676
Amount Spent
Completed
Project Status
Project Result
This project was completed in 2019 and the final report is in the process of being published. The team solicited inputs from a 150+ person international advisory group representing utilities, manufacturers, and researchers to identify gaps in the protocol for energy storage. The team concluded the project by performing conformance testing with other standards and streamlined the adoption through tech transfer, open source tools, and compliance testing. The standards for DER are relatively new, and this project created a framework for DNP3, which will allow organizations to be able to refine the technical and business aspects of testing. The DNP3 application note is used by both utilities and DER owners/manufacturers. IEEE 1547-2018 lists this DNP3 application note as one of three allowed protocols for managing DER.
The Issue
For smart inverters to communicate effectively with a variety of distributed energy resources, there needs to be a standard communication protocol. There has been significant development of DNP3 (Distributed Network Protocol) for smart inverter functions, but this has focused on communicating with solar photovoltaic systems. There is a need to expand and refine the DNP3 protocols to standardize communications to control energy storage functions.
Project Innovation
The recipient developed tools to make adoption of DNP3 for communication and control of energy storage systems simple and seamless. The project evaluated the current state of communications to DERs, worked with the DNP3 Users Group to update the existing energy storage and solar specifications to support the most advanced energy storage use cases, created an open-source DNP3 client to simplify product development of smart inverters, and developed the appropriate conformance testing tools to ensure interoperability.
Project Benefits
This project advanced the DNP3 protocol (communication standards for smart inverters) by making it simple and seamless while also improving communications with stand-alone energy storage systems and control of other inverter-based devices. This allows California to utilize more energy storage systems; thus, increasing the use of renewables and other DERs to support a more flexible grid.
Environmental Sustainability
Environmental benefits of this project stem from realizing the advanced use cases for energy storage that help reduce peaks and minimize the need for traditional generators to provide support at peak times, which will reduce the
Reliability
This project expanded the capability of utilities to control energy storage systems, which allows them to maximize the use of energy storage systems to provide a more reliable grid.
Key Project Members
Ben Ealey
Subrecipients
EnerNex, LLC
Xanthus Consulting International
SunSpec Alliance
MESA Standards Alliance
Match Partners
Electric Power Research Institute, Inc.
Xanthus Consulting International
SunSpec Alliance
MESA Standards Alliance
