Resilient Electricity Networks for a productive Grid Architecture (RENGA)

Lead Research Organisation: Imperial College London
Department Name: Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Abstract

Electricity access is widely acknowledged as one of the key enablers of human development. Bringing electricity to low income areas in the developing world involves great technical, geopolitical and socioeconomic challenges. In recent years, autonomous electricity supply systems (AESS) have found a role in replacing kerosene lamps and candles as sources for basic lighting. However, their power rating was too low to power even small machinery, which made them have very little impact on the way people produce goods. According to the well-established power systems planning paradigm, the way to enable electricity access suitable for more productive applications is to build new transmission corridors to ship power from large power plants to isolated areas where it will be distributed using regional distribution networks. While this approach proved successful in the mid twentieth century, it often incurs prohibitive costs that make such projects infeasible in developing countries. One of the main issues of the old paradigm is that it misses the opportunity to use distributed energy resources (ie small scale generation, energy storage, etc) available today to drive the costs down and achieve better energy supply. The aim of this project is to bring some light over this matter by investigating a new approach where the electrical network would start from the local interconnection of small scale AESS. This ambitious goal will require the investigation of a suitable technological solution to link multiple AESS together, the development of new tools that are suitable to optimise the operation and planning of a network of interconnected AESS with models of demand and generation tailored for rural electrification applications. The work will use Rwanda as the main study case with the cooperation of the University of Rwanda, that will provide support for the derivation of models and will study and characterise the most interesting productive uses of electricity to meet the specific needs in rural Rwanda. The work will also be carried in collaboration with BBOXX and Meshpower, two British companies started by alumni of Imperial College London that commercialise AESS in several countries around the world including Rwanda.

Planned Impact

This project will investigate the expansion of an electric power system starting from the aggregation of interconnected autonomous electricity supply systems (AESS). Within the project, we will research the technology required to build the interconnection network with affordability, safety, easy of installation and resilience in mind. We develop tools for the optimisation of the operation of such system and planning methods that will make extensive use of smart enabling technologies (e.g. flexible demand, energy stored) in order to lower the costs of building network infrastructure while achieving high resiliency. We will also develop models of demand and generation for planning studies and validate existing openly available data against historical data provided by several industrial partners. As part of the project, a team will also study potential productive uses of electricity in order to gain insight about what the real benefits of providing better access to electricity would be and providing specifications that will be used in the work on technology development and planning.

The work within the project is expected to have impact across different fields (ie power electronics, power systems engineering, energy policy) and to be of interest to academics, industry and policy makers. Impact in within the academic community will be maximised through the dissemination in specialised conferences and journal publications. Impact on industry and policy makers will be achieved through the collaboration with the AESS manufacturers involved in the project and through the influence of the work within the pres oject in our existing collaboration ties with distribution network operators (e.g. UKPN), utilities (EDCL in the project) and regulatory bodies (e.g. OFGEM).

A further impact expected in the project is the development expertise in the target LMIC countries. In this project we will work in collaboration with the University of Rwanda and the Tribhuvan University in Nepal. The interaction within the project in the form of co-supervision of the research assistants involved in the University of Rwanda and the multiple mutual exchanges between the institutions, we aim to establish long lasting ties with both institutions that will give more international visibility to these universities to attract researchers and prospect students. We have already been part in the validation of an MSc programme in the University of Rwanda as external advisers and the expectation is to use the project meetings to be part of teaching activities within the courses taught at the university.

Publications

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Baranda Alonso J (2021) The potential for solar-diesel hybrid mini-grids in refugee camps: A case study of Nyabiheke camp, Rwanda in Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments

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Beath H (2021) The cost and emissions advantages of incorporating anchor loads into solar mini-grids in India in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transition

 
Description We have proposed a new concept for electrical interconnection between electrical from rural communities that are within a kilometre distance from each other. The interconnection is based on a power-electronic converter. The device was designed to be easy to deploy with minimal changes required on the host mini-grids. This is achieved by not coupling the low-level dynamics of the two mini-grids and by providing galvanic isolation to connect multiple systems with different earthing arrangements together. The system is designed to operate with a wide output voltage range, which enables the use of robust controllers that can be deployed without knowing the exact length of the conductors and their exact impedance (a common shortcoming of other network concepts based on power electronics). The lockdowns in the UK and in Rwanda during the pandemic 2020 and 2021, delayed our plans for the testing and demonstration of the system in a real installation in Rwanda; but our prototypes were validated successfully in our laboratory at Imperial College London.

On the demand and renewable generation modelling workstream, we have developed a new model of electricity demand that can be used to create simulated demand data that corresponds to the electricity access levels as set out by the multi-tier framework for energy access from the World Bank. This model can be used to create long-term predictions of demand and buid demand profiles for simulations that validate off-grid PV system designs in low-access countries. We have incorporated new functionality into our energy system model for simulating and optimising solar-battery-diesel mini-grids, and applied it to a real-life system in a refugee camp in Rwanda. This work identified opportunities for fuel savings by humanitarian agencies, significantly reducing costs and GHG emissions, and assessed the business case for the mini-grid operator in connecting refugee enterprises in the local marketplace, which was found to be commercially viable. Additionally, developments and refinements of the open-source code have made the model easier to set up and operate for new users.

On the operational planning workstream, we have developed a methodology to provide resiliency to mini-grids. Resiliency is one of the potential strengths of decentralised energy systems where generation and energy storage could be coordinated to supply critical loads under emergency scenarios. Our methodology coordinates the recovery of the system following the advent of major disturbances (eg extreme weather events).
Exploitation Route On the technology side, we have published the methods we use for the operation of the interconnection network and the design of the controllers of the converters. At the time of this submission we are working on the publication of a paper on the details of the converter topology that we used to demonstrate our interconnection network concept along with a further paper on a protection strategy suitable to identify and isolate a fault using inexpensive hardware.

The methods for resilient operation of mini-grids are being disseminated through open journal publications and they are available for anyone to implement in real systems or in simulation environments. The energy system model CLOVER and its new developments are open-source and freely available online, including user guides and documentation, for others to replicate and build upon our work. The results of this workstream have been presented in several academic and practitioner-focused webinars and conferences to share the results with a wide range of stakeholders.

The models of electricity demand are made available for others to use; these could be of great interest for microgrid/minigrid developers to carry out design validation studies during the commissioning of their systems. We encourage those using our tools to provide us feedback so that we may improve the tuning of our models.
Sectors Energy

 
Description We have received expressions of interest on our mathematical models of demand and generation for rural electrification from developers of off-grid electrification solutions who need tools for long-term planning of the systems they install. We collaborated with the company Meshpower to optimise the operation of an actual minigrid system installed in a refugee camp in Rwanda (the system started to be built before the pandemic and was finished afterwards). The Mahama refugee camp houses 60,000 people and the power was used for refugee businesses. Our analysis highlighted opportunities for savings in fuel costs and emissions by scheduling the operation of a diesel generator better. We also modelled minigrid power systems for health centres in India. It was a collaboration with Oorja, who provided us with data from health centres and used our results to optimise the sizing of their designs. We have also used the models to develop software to size and operate EV charging stations powered by solar generation for another minigrid developer, ModularityGrid as part of an Energy Catalyst Round 7 project.
First Year Of Impact 2021
Sector Energy
Impact Types Societal

Economic

 
Description Prof Goran Strbac appointed as Lead Author in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III
Geographic Reach Multiple continents/international 
Policy Influence Type Membership of a guideline committee
Impact This will provide evidence to all governments related to the climate change mitigation, assessing methods for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. It is expected that work will be the core for the development of national and International policy frameworks to ensure cost effective reduction of carbon emissions at the global level.
 
Description Reviewing applications for the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation in the area of Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Geographic Reach National 
Policy Influence Type Membership of a guideline committee
Impact I have included this entry in this category because it was the closest I could find. I was approached by the Royal Academy of Engineering, to invite me to review the applications for their Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation. This is an annual prize established in 2014 founded by the Royal Academy of Engineering to support African innovators developing scalable engineering solutions to development challenges. I was a reviewer for the 2019, 2020 and 2021 editions.
URL https://www.raeng.org.uk/global/sustainable-development/africa-prize
 
Description "WP4C: EV charging station design tools" in Development of a prototype hybrid minigrid system: Integrating innovative biomass, PV, decentralised lithium battery storage and cloud-based AI monitoring platform to provide 24-hour off-grid, clean electricity.
Amount £73,340 (GBP)
Organisation Innovate UK 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 01/2022 
End 06/2022
 
Description Work Package 3b: Feasibility analysis and techno-economic modelling of the off-grid electricity system
Amount £36,000 (GBP)
Organisation Innovate UK 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 11/2020 
End 07/2021
 
Title A Random Forest Regression Model of a Sheet-and-tube Hybrid Photovoltaic-Thermal Solar Panel 
Description A 2D model of a hybrid sheet-and-tube photovoltaic-thermal (PV-T) solar collector. These modelling files can be used to assess the performance of hybrid PV-T sheet-and-tube collectors in a wide range of environmental conditions. 
Type Of Technology Software 
Year Produced 2022 
Open Source License? Yes  
URL https://zenodo.org/record/6647053
 
Title CLOVER 
Description CLOVER is a series of software tools for minigrid simulation and optimisation for supporting rural electrification in developing countries. The tools are implemented in Python and they are free to use and modify under the MIT license. The development of the tools started before RENGA, as part of the PhD project of Dr Philip Sandwell under the supervision of Prof Jenny Nelson, one of the Co-I. Numerous additions to the software tools have been made as part of project RENGA and these are described in the publications listed in the project that are authored by Prof Nelson. 
Type Of Technology Webtool/Application 
Year Produced 2019 
Open Source License? Yes  
Impact The software was used to analyse the performance of the current electrification solution in a refugee camp in Rwanda, highlighting opportunities for savings in fuel costs and emissions by scheduling the operation of a diesel generator better. The software has also been used to provide an assessment of the benefits of including health centres as anchor loads when designing community minigrids in India, which has informed the decisions of Oorja Development Solutions India Private Limited a local company that finances and deploys decentralised solar energy systems in India. 
URL https://github.com/phil-sandwell/CLOVER
 
Description A poster presentation at the Climate Expo 2021 Conference 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact This talk was given by Dr Joan Marc Rodriguez and presented the work developed in the WP2 of the RENGA project. This presentation described the aim of the RENGA project and its particular view on how the integration of renewables in microgrids to build a bottom-up system in developing countries can help contributing to the creation of a cleaner electrical energy system.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL http://climateexp0.org
 
Description A poster presentation at the EPSRC Centre for Power Electronics Conference 2021 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Industry/Business
Results and Impact This talk was given by Dr Joan Marc Rodriguez and presented the work developed in the WP2 of the RENGA project, which aimed to tailor power electronic devices for the mini-grids in rural areas of developing countries. The poster was presented online where the audience could connect and interact with the presenter in 1 to1 talks. People all over the UK universities and industries involved in the field of power electronic converters attended the conference.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
URL https://www.powerelectronics.ac.uk/2020/04/29/2021-centre-for-power-electronics-annual-conference/
 
Description A seminar organised by the Energy Futures Lab at Imperial College London about Project RENGA 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Other audiences
Results and Impact The Energy Futures Labs is an institute at Imperial College London that fosters multidisciplinary research across the College around the Energy theme. They run 1 hour weekly seminars that are openly advertised for anyone to attend. I gave a talk to present project RENGA and the state of our work. There were about 40 people attending, around 10 were academics and PhD students from my department, some 10 people from industry and around 20 other academics and PhD students from other departments of Imperial College.

I received many expressions of interest about the project including a couple of people from industry that requested further information and offered help improving the models of distributed generation for electrification.

We also published a blog post with further information about the project and the topics covered in the talk:
https://energyfutureslab.blog/2019/02/28/building-an-electrical-system-from-the-bottom-up-by-interconnecting-minigrids/
This has been advertised through Twitter and the webpage of the Energy Futures Lab.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2019
URL http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/administration/energyfutureslab/events...
 
Description A webinar organised by the Energy Futures Lab on "Microgrids: An enabling technology towards more resilient energy systems?" 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact This talk was given by Dr Anastasios Oulis-Rousis and it presented the work he has done within WP1 of the project where he proposed an operational framework to enhance the resilience of a mini-grid. The method makes use of load priorisation and scheduling of energy storage in preparation to withstand disruptive events. About 20 people attended the talk and the audience was a mix between university researchers, professionals from the energy sector and general public.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2020
URL https://www.imperial.ac.uk/events/127133/microgrids-an-enabling-technology-towards-more-resilient-en...
 
Description An interview for an article about Mini-Grids to be published in Wired UK 
Form Of Engagement Activity A press release, press conference or response to a media enquiry/interview
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Dr Junyent-Ferre was interviewed by a Ms Delle Chan from Wired UK as part of an article on mini-grids. The interview took place in January 2020. The final article was published in May 2020.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2018,2020
URL https://www.wired.co.uk/article/mini-power-grids
 
Description Decarbonisation of Energy Infrastructure in Displacement Situations 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact Invited talk at session hosted by the Red Cross on decarbonisation of humanitarian infrastructure. Several attendees from international agencies and NGOs have since reached out to learn more about my work and the issues raised, with ongoing collaborations.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description European Energy Research Alliance - Energy System Integration WG meeting (Prof G Strbac is a member of this WG) - WG meeting was in Belgium, September 19-20, 2022 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact This was EERA (European Energy Research Alliance) workshop focused on Energy System Cost (Leuven, Belgium), on September 19-20, 2022.
The presentation made was related to the technical and economic frameworks that governments and industries will need to build in the future efficient, resilient and sustainable European energy system.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
 
Description PV for rural electrification 
Form Of Engagement Activity A talk or presentation
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Postgraduate students
Results and Impact A brief introduction and overview of energy system modelling for around 40 students (mostly postgraduates) and early-career researchers, which helped to establish the fundamentals of their research projects in renewable energy modelling.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description Prof G Strbac joined IEEE P2030 Smart Grid Interoperability Working Group 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Focus of this working group is on the development of standards of future Smart Grid Interoperability
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2023
 
Description Refugees and Energy Access: Policy Proliferation and Institutional Confusion 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Third sector organisations
Results and Impact Panel discussion on the technical, social and political barriers to sustainable energy in displacement settings
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2021
 
Description Technical mentoring through the Africa Prize Mentoring Programme for PEEC Energy (Uganda) 
Form Of Engagement Activity A formal working group, expert panel or dialogue
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact In January 2022 I was invited to become a mentor of Philip Kyeswa, the founder of a PEEC Energy, a company based in Rwanda that makes smart metering devices for rural electrication, mini-grids and solar home systems. We hold a monthly meeting where I provide advice on technical matters, including features smart meters may implement or suggestions on algorithms the metering system could use to monitor battery storage state, assess the yield of a generation unit or detect anomalies.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2022
URL https://www.peecenergy.com/