International Development of a Distributed Energy Resource Test Platform for Electrical and Interoperability Certification

Several international research laboratories are collaborating under a Smart Grid International Research Facility Network (SIRFN) project to develop certification procedures for advanced distributed energy resources (DER). To effectively evaluate interoperability and grid-support functionality in DER equipment, test permutations across the full range of modes and parameters are required. It is impractical to complete these experiments manually so the project team is working to develop a software tool, associated abstraction layers, and hardware drivers to execute the experiments autonomously using the same opensource test logic. This software can then be programmed to complete interoperable DER certification experiments at DER vendor facilities, certification laboratories, or research institutions. By sharing the codebase with all institutions, barriers to adoption steadily decrease. To demonstrate the approach, Underwriters Laboratories 1741 Supplement A volt-var and specified power factor test results from multiple laboratories are presented and compared.