A team at Sandia National Laboratories is working to help manage voltage and support a resilient grid with AI-driven controls that can respond in real time to fluctuations in electricity demand and supply.

The impetus is that utilities are facing a new challenge as AI drives rapid data center growth: keeping voltage steady as electricity demand grows, shifts quickly, and becomes harder to predict. As demand grows and more distributed energy resources such as batteries, rooftop solar and backup generators come online, utilities have more moving pieces to coordinate and less margin for error in keeping voltage steady for critical loads.

The team’s work has moved from computer simulation to laboratory testing with real grid hardware and field demonstrations at two sites in Lubbock, Texas. The same approach could be applied to strengthen power resilience for critical defense infrastructure.

“The way we generate electricity and the loads being placed on the grid are evolving, but the backbone of the grid that connects these is staying the same,” said Sandia engineer Rachid Darbali-Zamora. “We need more control to ensure everything can be integrated into the grid in a more reliable manner. A key goal is keeping voltage within operating limits as conditions change from second to second.”

Reliable electric power is also a national security issue, especially for critical infrastructure at home and abroad.

“In scenarios of national conflict or war, adversaries will target energy infrastructure to disrupt both military and civil functions,” Sandia Labs senior manager Charles Hanley said. “The Sandia-developed DERMS system helps to defeat such adversarial attacks through the application of agile and secure technologies that adapt to real-time developments and keep critical systems — and mission functions — operating.”

Sandia has a deep understanding of related threats, vulnerabilities and mitigations, Hanley added, which gives the team the “unique capability to design and test such AI systems in real settings, thereby providing technology solutions to address critical issues of national security.”

While frequency is typically managed at the bulk power system level, distribution grids need fast local voltage regulation to maintain power quality for sensitive loads. Maintaining power quality can be as important as maintaining power itself when it comes to defense and other critical infrastructure.

Traditionally, utilities manage voltage by installing or upgrading equipment such as capacitor banks and line voltage regulators.

“Those are traditional, conventional devices that are more mechanical — switching on and off,” Darbali-Zamora said.

Sandia’s approach aims to provide more continuous, coordinated voltage support by using hardware and capabilities already built into many grid-connected devices. Those devices include inverters, which connect resources such as solar panels and batteries to the electric grid to provide steadier voltage and improved power quality. By coordinating many devices at once, the controller can respond quickly to disturbances, including those caused by deliberate disruption of energy infrastructure.

“To provide these services, we’re leveraging inverters that are already in the grid,” he said. “That means the utility doesn’t have to make as many upgrades. It can also reduce reliance on slower, mechanical switching when the grid is under stress.”

The software platform is a distributed energy resource management system, or DERMS, which Sandia said forecasts changes in electricity use and available power, coordinates grid-connected devices and automatically responds to disturbances to support a more resilient grid. AI helps the controller coordinate device actions in near real time while respecting equipment limits and operating constraints.

“Our team wanted to deliver something that is powerful and intelligent, but also realistic for utilities to adopt,” Darbali-Zamora explained. “AI helps us make sense of all the moving pieces on a modern distribution grid and do it in real time.”

Darbali-Zamora said the team started with the basic premise that one-size-fits-all grid controls don’t work everywhere. “Every location is unique,” he said, with different hazards, critical services and mixes of grid-connected resources.

DERMS has been tested successfully in the lab and demonstrated in the field, and now the team is also working to move the software toward real-world use.

The project was selected for the DOE Energy I-Corps Phase II program, which connects researchers with potential users to better understand operational needs and identify features that would make the tools practical to deploy.

Sandia National Laboratories is a multi-mission laboratory operated by National Technology and Engineering Solutions of Sandia LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc., for the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. Sandia Labs has major research and development responsibilities in nuclear deterrence, global security, defense, energy technologies and economic competitiveness, with main facilities in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Livermore, California.