Intelligent MicroGrids with Appropriate Storage for Energy (IMASE)

Whilst the background situation in India and UK are very different they have common requirements in terms of community energy management including generation, loads and storage, with the UK moving from centralised generation and control to local generation and control and India trying to get more users on-grid but with a short-term need to manage off-grid at a local community. A critical challenge for India is to improve the supply of power to rural communities: the power cuts which hit 28 states in India in July 2012 demonstrate that action must be taken urgently to advance power generation and distribution technologies and this will undoubtedly require major increases in renewable sources (as with the UK). Whilst reforms to the central distribution system may be slow, significant changes for end users can be achieved using "microgrids" (e.g. communities with microgeneration) which, when coupled to appropriate energy storage technologies, have the capability to operate off-grid. Research into design operation and management of microgrids can have a significant impact, particularly for rural communities, in the short to medium term.
Energy storage is required at different time scales for microgrids in order to ensure the quality of supply (small energy stores that can respond quickly in order to even out fluctuations in the power supply), daily mismatch (medium size stores to provide energy at times of low or no wind/solar generation during a day) and seasonal storage (large stores to meet the seasonal shortfall in microgeneration, for example during the winter or monsoon period). This distributed energy storage for a community's microgrid also provides an opportunity for load shedding from the national grid. Therefore, energy storage for microgrids is not only essential for grid remote locations, but has an important role to play for grid connected microgrids, helping to reduce the dependency of the community on the main grid and providing distributed energy storage at times of over capacity on the main grid.
Optimising a microgrid in order to maximise the efficiency of the microgrid whilst maintaining the quality and security of supply requires the integration of electricity generation, storage, and transmission/distribution components. The optimal selection and configuration of these components depends on a number of key factors such as demand profile, microgeneration profile, main grid dependency (ranging from no dependency, e.g. grid remote, to a high dependency, e.g. microgeneration capacity is only a fraction of the local power demand). The energy management system needs to balance a community's energy demand through direct microgeneration, stored energy and, when available, centrally generated electricity. The microgrid can be AC or DC, which will affect the power conversion efficiency for the microgeneration and appliances which make-up the demand on the microgrid. Another important factor is the two-way interface between the microgrid and main grid. It quickly becomes evident that one microgrid solution will not be effective for all the potential deployment scenarios and a flexible systems approach is needed to establish the best technologies and best energy management strategies to provide power for the local community but also to help make the main grid more robust.

The outcomes of this research project can potentially influence all users of electrical energy. Microgrids or "energy communities" covers a wide range of potential application scenarios where ultimately both the consumers (prosumers?) and the suppliers receive benefit in a market that is certain to change radically.
Electricity Consumers
A direct impact in India will be on rural communities who will see an uninterrupted electrical supply, even when they lose connection to the main grid. This will have an enormous impact on the quality of life in areas where there is no stable supply of electricity, especially in the fundamental areas of health, sanitation, ICT and the development of any local manufacturing industry. Customers in both the UK and India will exploit energy storage to maximise their own use of local microgeneration and reduce overall energy costs, and this can be envisaged at many levels: house, village, town, factory, commercial retail park etc.
Electricity Suppliers
If there is a wide uptake of the microgrid technology proposed then electricity suppliers will see benefit in terms of more predictable energy signatures at low levels of distribution, reducing some of the challenges associated with predicting the balance of consumption and generation which is used to manage the dispatch of centrally generated power, and the dispatch of high volume renewable energy sources to create a more secure and reliable supply. Indeed difficulty with predicting energy usage will only increase in the future as electric vehicles and electric based heating become more prominent. In addition, the use of embedded energy storage and managed microgrid technologies will enable the penetration of larger electrical loads (particularly the increase in EV useage) without having to upgrade existing infrastructure (cables, transformers etc). This will be particularly important for urban areas where space, as well as cost prevents major changes to distribution equipment.
Equipment Manufacturers
The technologies researched within this project will be exploited by various industries. These will include manufacturers of different types of energy storage systems, control equipment, renewable energy systems (including wave power, concentrated solar) as well as installers for such systems - particularly with the capability to install RES at significant levels. Having the capability and infrastructure at both Nottingham and IIT to demonstrate microgrid complete energy management technologies, with different, scalable microgrid scenarios, will underpin our capability to engage industry in the commercialisation process.