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As prices for solar photovoltaics and battery energy storage plummet, grids around the globe are undergoing tremendous changes. How should we design and operate grids in the future in the presence of these technologies? This talk will cover some of my group’s recent efforts to answer this question. First, I will focus on a new approach to decentralized network optimization – a variant of the primal-dual subgradient method – that can be used to enable grid-integration of distributed energy resources such as solar photovoltaics, batteries and electric vehicles. I will then discuss how grids should be built in the future when distributed energy resource costs are so low. Using a simple concept called an iso-reliability curve, I will explain a method to identify cost-optimal fully decentralized systems – i.e. standalone solar home systems. After applying this method to a large solar resource dataset, I will present results indicating that in many unelectrified parts of the world, future decentralized systems will be able to deliver electricity at costs and reliabilities better than existing centralized grids.
