About the project
This research project is within the Doctoral Centre for Advanced Electrical Power Engineering and will investigate the impact of stochastic and intermittent dynamics of renewable sources of wind/solar energy on power system performance, and how these dynamics can be better modelled, monitored and controlled to ensure power system stability.
A transition to wind and solar based renewable generation is necessary to ensure a sustainable low-carbon future. But this transition introduces several challenges to power system operation.
One of the challenges is to find the impact of stochastic and intermittent dynamics of renewable sources of energy on power grids. This is not a trivial problem given that the available aggregated models of wind/solar farms do not correctly represent the dynamics of the constituent turbines or photovoltaic panels.
Another challenge is a fall in system inertia for grids with large-scale integration of renewable sources, since renewable energy sources do not contribute to system inertia (which is the rotating mass in the system). A direct impact of low inertia is to make the grids unstable as inertia is needed to resist system disturbances and to maintain system frequency.
Towards this broad goal of maintaining the stability of power grids in light of renewable integration, this PhD will explore various ideas, such as developing an accurate model for a wind/solar farm that preserves the underlying oscillatory dynamics, while reducing complexity, thereby eliminating the use of inaccurate substitute models. Such a model will then be used to design dynamic estimation/monitoring and optimal control schemes for wind/solar farms in order to assist in global system stability.
The project is open to customisation based on the particular interests of the student but needs to be in the broad field of dynamics and stability aspects of renewable integration.
