Research

Electric Power and Energy Systems – Renewable Energy

The research topics related to electric power systems are mainly related to the renewable energy sources and their integration into both transmission and distribution systems. In transmission systems the provision of ancillary services by wind turbine parks and large industrial consumers is investigated, e.g. the contribution to primary frequency control and inertial response. With respect to distribution systems, a lot of attention has been paid to power quality and in recent years pioneer research on microgrids has been carried out. While firstly short-term control aspects (e.g. primary frequency control) have been investigated, the research has been extended towards control and energy management over longer time frames, e.g. unit commitment problems in microgrids, including storage. This also includes economic and environmental aspects and concrete applications, e.g. the optimisation of the energy system of business clusters. Both the short-term control aspects and long-term energy management are investigated for several applications, i.e., the chemical process industry, power-to-gas installations and wind farms. One of the challenges of integrating renewable energy sources in power grids is their intermittent character which can be compensated by (e.g.) demand-side response, i.e. by the flexibility of electric power consumption. Flexibility is currently one of the focus research domains and is being investigated at the supply and demand side and by means of energy storage.

With respect to the electric power generation based on renewable energy, we have a long research tradition in wind energy. We focus both on the machine-side control, to increase the energy yield with advanced control methodologies, and the grid-side control, to provide ancillary services to the grid or to offer power quality compensation. In particular the dynamic conditions are treated, e.g., due to fastly varying wind speeds and variable grid conditions.

Power electronic converters and their control play an important role in the topics mentioned above, and form another important research topic in the field of electric power & energy systems.

More information can be found on the Electric Power and Energy Systems research webpages.