UK-MicroGrids

Completed

Other Power and Storage Technologies(Electricity transmission and distribution)

Basic and strategic applied research

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)

Not Cross-cutting

Dr M Barnes
Electrical & Electronic Engineering
University of Manchester

Standard

EPSRC

01 July 2005

31 December 2008

42 months

£229,106

Electrical engineering

North West

Systems -- Process Environment and Sustainability

Dr M Barnes, Electrical & Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester

Professor N Jenkins, Engineering, Cardiff University
Professor J Milanovic, Electrical & Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester
Dr AC Renfrew, Electrical & Electronic Engineering, University of Manchester

Project Contact, Intelligent Power Systems Ltd
Project Contact, Urenco (Capenhurst) Ltd

Low-carbon energy will have to contribute more of our electrical power generation in future. Many of the opportunities for using renewable and combined-heat-and-power generation are at a much lower power than conventional central generation, and are distributed over a wider geographical area. Central control of this would be very difficult and prohibitively expensive to achieve, yet if significant amounts of low-carbon generation is to be integrated into the grid, some means must be found to make it well behaved .Research funded by the US government has suggested one solution: loads and microsources are bundled into smart aggregate units or Microgrids. The main network only sees the net performance of the whole Microgrid. If the microgenerators are connected through fast-acting power electronic interfaces, the aggregate Microgrid performance can in theory be made to behave as a model citizen , a small ideal generator or load. At present Microgrids are assumed to disconnect fromthe main network during system disturbances. Clearly this is unacceptable for systems like the UK, where model citizens must remain connected to the network and contribute to the reliable recovery of the network from such disturbances.This proposal aims to solve this key problem: how the Microgrid hardware and software can be modified to contribute as model citizens during network disturbances so that they may be used in the UK. Research will involve theoretical studies and will be supportedby extensive experimental tests on a model laboratory Microgrid

01/01/07