US 12,355,236 B2
Systems and methods for fault tolerant energy management systems configured to manage heterogeneous power plants
Shaheen Fakhar, Herndon, VA (US); Christian Chia Wang, Philadelphia, PA (US); Robert Jordan Toth, Leesburg, VA (US); and Andrew Robert Beyer, Aldie, VA (US)
Assigned to Energy Vault, Inc., Westlake Village, CA (US)
Filed by Energy Vault, Inc., Westlake Village, CA (US)
Filed on Oct. 22, 2024, as Appl. No. 18/922,947.
Application 18/922,947 is a continuation in part of application No. 18/473,579, filed on Sep. 25, 2023, granted, now 12,149,080.
Claims priority of provisional application 63/518,283, filed on Aug. 8, 2023.
Prior Publication US 2025/0055312 A1, Feb. 13, 2025
Int. Cl. H02J 13/00 (2006.01)
CPC H02J 13/00 (2013.01) 21 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A computer-implemented method of distributing tasks at a power plant, the method comprising:
distributing, by an energy management system configured to control components of a power plant to manage power output to a power grid, a control function across multiple nodes in a cluster of nodes, the cluster of nodes comprising electronic devices configured to control power plant components and configured to provide a plurality of combinations of redundancy to control power plant components, the cluster of nodes comprising at least a first node, a second node and a third node;
designating, by the energy management system, the first node in the cluster of nodes as a lead controller, wherein the second node and the third node are designated as follower controllers;
receiving energy management system tasks at the energy management system;
passing at least a portion of the received tasks over a network from the energy management system to the first node in the cluster of nodes, the first node configured as the lead controller;
delegating, in real time, by the first node configured as the lead controller, tasks, comprising at least a portion of the received tasks, to other nodes, configured as follower controllers, in the cluster of nodes;
at least partly in response to detecting that the first node, configured as the lead controller, in the cluster of nodes is unavailable, executing a failover process comprising a cluster voting process, wherein nodes in the cluster of nodes vote for a new lead controller; and
based at least in part on the voting process, enable the second node in the cluster of nodes to be designated as lead controller.