Renewable Energy PhD Studentship in Power Electronics: Development of reliable active network Management System

Location: Penryn Campus, University of Exeter, Cornwall TR10 9FE

Project Description:
Renewable energy resources such as wind, solar, marine, geothermal and bio gas have the potential to make significant contributions to the UK’s energy security and carbon reduction targets. However, the intermittent nature of these resources causes significant challenges to the electric grid and in particular: voltage fluctuations and cable thermal stress. Local Distribution Network Operators have limited the amount of distributed generation to be connected and have also put in place schemes to curtail the local generation from Renewable energy resources on a pre-timed manner. Such curtailment schemes will not result in optimised operation of the network as they are based on historical data.

This project, which is half funded by Western Power Distribution (WPD), seeks to develop a fully optimised Active Network Management system of the distribution network in order to increase the utilisation of the already connected renewable resources and to increase the future connection capacity. The project will build on an existing constraint model that has already been developed by WPD. The Active Network Management system will monitor various points at the distribution network to determine the amount of power that the network can accommodate so operational constraints are avoided at all time, namely voltage fluctuations limits and cable thermal capacity. It will consequently send curtailment signals in real time to the connected distribution generation units as well as the amount of reactive power that can be injected or absorbed.