Mohammad Nikkhah Mojdehi

Technical Director – Grid Modernization

O'Brien & Gere

Dr. Mojdehi provides leadership and technical guidance for O'Brien & Gere's energy program, including power resiliency, microgrid/energy storage, and other advanced power applications. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Syracuse University. His areas of technical expertise include renewable energy and distributed generation support for public and private sector clients and utilities. He has performed original research, technical guidance, analytical studies, technology readiness assessments and evaluations, and modeling to assess loads for deployment of power generation and energy storage. He has published several articles in peer-reviewed conferences and journals. He is an adjunct faculty in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Syracuse University.

The next generation electrical distribution systems (EDSs) represent multi-domain complex systems and there are no comprehensive analytical tools to respond to all concerns and challenges simultaneously. Utilities' analytical demand varies based on the nature of the application. For instance, steady-state applications such as static power flow based analysis have been utilities' traditional analytical practices for planning and operating purposes. However, moving toward the next generation EDS, new concerns and challenges drive the needs to evaluate transient-state and real-time applications. In this presentation, a novel analytical tool to perform transient analysis of EDS. The tool utilizes the raw EDS data from other software applications, such as GIS, ASPEN, and CYME/CYMDIST, to create the accurate EDS model in an automated fashion. The tool is equipped with a comprehensive EDS components' library, including different types of distributed energy resource (DER) and smart inverters. The tool can perform several studies and analysis to investigate the impact of integrating DER into the EDS. We have performed several case studies, using actual EDS data to show the effectiveness of the tool. The results along with lesson learned from these use cases will be presented.

Presentation: An Analytical Engine for DER Interconnection Studies