Overview

GridBallast is a research project funded by ARPA-E and led by NRECA, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. It has developed low cost control devices for water heaters and circuit panels that can operate autonomously to improve the stability and resilience of the North American electric grid. Project partners include Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Eaton, and SparkMeter.

Hardware

The GridBallast controllers measure grid frequency and voltage locally and control the loads to fix deviations from safe operating limits. An open source controller hardware platform shown below has been developed at CMU. A water heater controller has been developed at Eaton, and a circuit panel controller has been developed at SparkMeter.


OpenGB Hardware	Schematic for OpenGB

Eaton WaterHeaterGB Controller	SparkMeter SmartCircuitGB Controller

Simulation

Before testing in the laboratory and the field, we ran simulations to prove the safety and effectiveness of the controls. Results across multiple utilities show that the controls reduce voltage and violations even in environments with heavy rooftop solar penetration. Simulations were built on top of the Open Modeling Framework, an open source electric grid modeling platform (shown below in screenshots and a video walkthrough). A more detailed report on the simulation results is also available.


Utility Simulation of Frequency and Voltage Regulation

Load and Controller Simulation	Utility Simulation Demo Video

Open Source

All project source code, documentation, and analysis are linked above and are available in open source at https://github.com/gridballast.

Project Schedule

Development of the core algorithms and simulation results showing their effectiveness was completed in 2017. The hardware was developed in 2018. Field demonstrations at two rural electric cooperatives were completed in 2019.

Contact

For any questions, please email admin@gridballast.com.