Duke Energy poised to open new Triangle control center aimed to help grid reliability

A visitor standing in the middle of Duke Energy’s new control center in the Raleigh suburbs can quickly glean how much energy the utility is using, how much is coming from solar and if the state’s power grid is facing any problems.

Friday, Duke Energy Progress employees will start working in the control center for the first time.

From workstations with banks of as many as six computer monitors, they will guide the route the electricity will take from the powerplant to the substation. They will decide if wires are overloaded and which alternatives they should use if that happens. And they will decide if coal or natural gas plants need to be fired up to meet the region’s demand for energy.

“This is part of our effort to modernize the electric system, to modernize the way we manage that system and to modernize the way that we can work together to be more efficient in our operations,” said Jeff Brooks, a Duke spokesman.

Across the hall, a separate team works to guide energy from substations to customers’ homes and businesses.

Maps dot the walls, showing temperatures throughout the company’s service area, where lightning has struck and which parts of the state are covered in clouds. This is all information that a grid operator can use to figure out if demand is higher in one corner of Duke’s service area than another or if problems are likely somewhere.

A graph that could be found on each of the room’s four walls showed how what the energy demand was on Duke Energy Progress’ grid, how much energy the utility’s non-solar resources had to generate and how much total energy it was generating.

Another map, one that wasn’t on display Wednesday, shows a map of Virginia and the Carolinas, allowing Duke transmission operators to understand not only what’s happening on its system, but also what’s happening with its neighbors and thus what kind of power could be coursing across the state’s grid.

That kind of display wasn’t available at the former control facility, said Cedric Lloyd, the senior manager of power systems operations for Duke Energy Progress.

“We didn’t even have access to it. So I think that’s one of the benefits of us coming here, we’re starting now to be able to put up more situational display for the operators to look at,” Lloyd said.

And the new control center is designed to work in partnership with a similarly updated facility that covers the Duke Energy Carolinas service area.

“All of that kind of works together as a multi-layered approach to improve our operation to help make sure that when demand’s the highest, in these cold winter days or the hot summer days, that we can reliably meet those energy needs,” Brooks said.

During a tour Wednesday, Duke officials said the facility is part of a long-term effort to improve the state’s grid, both to make it more reliable and to allow it to best use generation sources that aren’t available all the time.

For now, that means solar energy. But Brooks envisions a near future that will mean better integrating battery storage and electric vehicles like the Ford F-150 Lightning that are capable of pushing power from their batteries back onto the grid.

“Power’s going to flow in multiple directions across the system, from solar systems across the grid, from natural gas and nuclear plants, from battery storage and electric vehicles. All of these components have to work together dynamically every hour of every day so your power stays reliable. That’s the job of this facility,” Brooks said.

Duke will recover the cost of the new facility as part of the multi-year rate plan approved by the N.C. Utilities Commission earlier this year. The cost of the facility wasn’t immediately available.

A similar facility has operated elsewhere in the Triangle for about 50 years, but Brooks said that has become dated. The display on the wall in the old facility, he noted, is made up of ceramic squares rather than the electronic display in the new building.

The new building is part of the company’s efforts to make its grid more reliable. That also includes upgrading transmission and distribution lines.

“Of course it’s been updated over the years, but that facility has reached the end of its service life and part of this project was to modernize all of our energy control centers so they are compatible systems that work on the latest technologies,” Brooks said.

This story was produced with financial support from the Hartfield Foundation and 1Earth Fund, in partnership with Journalism Funding Partners, as part of an independent journalism fellowship program. The N&O maintains full editorial control of the work.