Jordan is a rising Junior at the University of Hawaii at Manoa studying Electrical Engineering. He was born in Oahu but grew up primarily in China. He came back to Hawaii at a later age and attend middle, and then later graduated from President William McKinley High School. He enjoys outdoor activities such as hiking and jogging. But he also enjoys watching anime, hero action movies and sci-fi films. Currently, Jordan is interested in renewable energy with the hopes of aiding Hawaii’s strive to being fully self-sustaining in the near future.

Home Island: Oahu
Institution when accepted: University of Hawaii at Manoa

Akamai Project: Determining Hosting Capacities through the Optimization of Distribution Models to Support Clean Energy

Project Site: Hawaii Electric Light (HELCO)

Mentors: Riley Ceria, Kim Tabac, Kandice Kubojiri

Collaborators: Mickie Hirata, Mel Higa, Jashar Day, Nelson Nishimoto

Project Abstract:

HELCO (Hawaii Electric Light Company) is the utility company on Big Island that provides power generation, transmission and distribution. The Engineering team at HELCO would like to improve in their distribution model to support clean energy. With increasing levels of Distributed Energy Resources (DER), it is important to have an accurate distribution system models. In addition, with the added complication of renewable energies added into the circuit, the hosting capacity of each circuit needs to be carefully detailed. Each substation is unique with its own characteristics that can affect hosting capacity, such as circuit length, load distribution, nominal voltages, balance, installed devices and types of conductors. In order to calculate the true hosting capacity in this project, we determined phases (A, B, C) of each transformer in the field and tracked the number of customers off each transformer to provide a more accurate model from the existing model. Circuits and circuit information was inputted into eGIS (Geographical Information System), MicroStationV8i, and Synergi Electric software packages. After gathering and analyzing the data a new circuit hosting capacity can be determined. This could be compared against the old hosting capacity numbers and the differences can be analyzed. The circuits can also be further studied to determine what we need to do to further improve a circuit hosting capacity, such as circuit balancing, var controllers, voltage regulators, and reconductoring of lines.