NetworkAware Coordination (NAC) is the key technological innovation at the heart of the CONSORT project. Over the three years of the project, NAC has moved from a stage of basic research, to a design and robust implementation that runs in live network operations.
Report extract
NetworkAware Coordination (NAC) is the key technological innovation at the heart of the CONSORT project. Over the three years of the project, NAC has moved from a stage of basic research, to a design and robust implementation that runs in live network operations.
NAC consists of algorithms, techniques, and software for automatically coordinating distributed energy resources (DER) in a way that both respects network constraints, and minimises the total cost to the network provider and the DER owners. In effect, it achieves optimal power flow for the distribution system. The NAC preserves participants’ privacy and agency, and implements a distributed algorithm that enables it to scale to larger problems.
The CONSORT project has demonstrated the benefits of NAC on the Bruny Island network, by using NAC orchestrated DER, in this case customer owned solar and batteries, to reduce the island’s reliance on expensive diesel generation, which was previously TasNetworks’ only existing means of managing network constraints. The project has reduced the diesel requirements by around a third for the trial period. In addition to this, through detailed simulations that complement the live trials, we have demonstrated that this reduction is not just an artifact of having more DER installed on the island, but that the NAC brings significantly better outcomes over how the DNSP would manually dispatch the DER.
From the beginning, the NAC technology has been designed to not just solve the Bruny Island problem, but to also expand to a larger range of network conditions, to different types of DER including electric vehicles, and to enable load flexibility to the wider wholesale markets. It provides the means for distributed renewable generation and other DER to be safely, efficiently and flexibly integrated into our distribution networks, improving the outcomes for network operators, DER owners and the wider NEM. We propose future NAC development and trials to focus on delivering and demonstrating this full range of capabilities, making the smart grid an everyday reality.
