Control of renewable electricity networks

The research project aims to investigate emerging issues related to the control of future renewable electricity grids, integrating two of the research areas of the EPSRC: control engineering and energy networks. In order to meet the UK's climate targets, the electricity network will require a radical transformation over the coming decades, giving rise to a number of infrastructural challenges that must be dealt with in advance. The expansion of new technologies connected to the grid, such as integrated solar PV, home batteries, and electric vehicles will fundamentally alter the types of devices used to generate and store energy within the grid, leading to a loss of grid inertia and associated stability, while new grid topologies will arise with the growth of distributed generation, leading to a decline in the current centralised top-down power flow model.

These shifts in the grid structure will require novel control schemes acting at fast timescales in order to maintain stability and a consistent supply of energy. This project aims analyse and model these systems and to apply fundamental control engineering and optimisation methodologies to design schemes that ensure the systems remain stable in the presence of disturbances, with an emphasis on ensuring the control systems are robust to uncertainties in the grid model.