BCIT Integrated Grid Laboratory Planning Framework

This paper presents a planning framework for an educational training facility designed to incorporate exposure to equipment and scenarios seen in modern power systems, such as islanded microgrids, distributed renewable generation, and new information and communications technologies. The overall architecture is geared towards addressing skills and training gaps in undergraduate “power systems” education. The design principles make this laboratory safe, robust, scalable, modular, and expandable and can therefore also be considered for transport to remote sites for training or demonstration purposes. The framework is based on development and implementation of such a facility at the British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT) in the Vancouver area of Canada. It is the goal of the author to allow other institutes to reduce overall implementation time and to share and collaborate on educational materials and pedagogical results. The paper concludes with the presentation of a cost function which ranks, according to the author and BCIT's planning experience, the relative costs and benefits for such a facility in comparison with other possible approaches.