Decarbonising the Grid with Renewables

The expertise to assess the development of microgrids across a range of timescales from the long-term, lifetime cost of energy down to the short intervals required for protection and control systems, where events can occur—and need to be acted on—within milliseconds.

A resynchronisation system has been developed to bring the voltage, phase and frequency of a microgrid back into alignment with the main grid in the event of a fault on the distribution line.

The use of DC microgrids is a potential growth area with a range of platforms including vehicles, aerospace, marine and rail. There is a need for developing tools, techniques and models to back up serious experimental work on hardware prototypes, and is working on protection devices and systems.

Addressing the characterisation of photovoltaic (PV) generation variability to help network operators to plan appropriately for high penetration of distributed PV. A method for estimating the amount a low-voltage feeder can accommodate without exceeding upper voltage limits has been developed, along with methods to manage distribution voltage levels.

Designing controls for flexible, off-grid electricity networks that can interconnect small renewable resources and loads in the same way as the main electricity grid.

In an advanced distribution management system, multi-timescale Volt/VAR functionality enhances the efficiency, sustainability, stability and security of a grid, and its impact can be further improved with fast-acting smart inverters and battery energy storage systems.

Aiming to extend the use of modular multilevel converters across multiple application areas. The family of modular multilevel converters is the very definition of state-of-the-art when it comes to high-power power-electronics conversion.

Modular power electronics can provide optimised, reliable and cost-effective solutions for large-scale multi-MW systems across a range of renewable and energy storage applications. Unlocking the potential of large-scale solar PV and energy storage systems requires advances in power electronics topologies for interfacing with and supporting the electricity grid.

A low-cost universal converter that can act as either a power optimiser or a micro-inverter for photovoltaic (PV) modules would maximise the energy output of photovoltaic systems by constantly extracting the maximum power from each photovoltaic panel separately.

A comprehensive test set-up that can accommodate inverter capacities between 1kVA and 50kVA has been developed. It allows inverters to be tested to the edge of their performance envelope. The testing system can also be utilised for coarse and fine tuning of inverter control parameters.

Assessing Virtual Power Plant (VPP) hardware and online optimisation strategies, and the potential that these systems can play in the energy transition and subsequent electrification of energy use.

The widespread adoption of components with communication capabilities and internet-connectivity in power systems have increased the vulnerability of those power systems to damaging and potentially dangerous cyber-attacks. New methods are urgently required to rapidly and accurately detect attacks and protect control systems.

Expertise in embedded system design for various systems, including computer numerical control (CNC) systems, wireless sensor networks, and high performance, low energy embedded systems.

Massive penetration of energy storage systems presents new opportunities for power network operators and individual customers. Innovative cooperation of distributed energy storage systems can improve power quality while bringing additional capacity, flexibility and redundancy into power networks. It can also avoid costly power network upgrades and increase power-supply security.

The electricity grid delivers electrical energy from diverse generation sources to end users. It is a complex, continuously-evolving and dynamic system. Advances in sensing devices, digital technologies and communications make it possible to engineer systems for accurate, online, real-time monitoring of the grid and intelligent, automated control of its operation.

Condition Monitoring aims to detect abnormality as it happens during the operation of power equipment and systems, diagnosing the type and causes for the abnormal condition and identifying the location of the possible failure based on a wireless sensing network. SWER system monitoring is the most cost-effective choice for a distribution system of microgrids. However, due to the principle of SWER, the issue of voltage imbalance and instability has remained a serious issue for the past 20 years and fault detection is difficult due to the high impedance of the network.

Using real-time simulation and testing expertise to assess the potential for maloperation of Virtual Power Plant (VPP) hardware, including inverter disconnections, communication system failures and energy swings between competing VPP operators.

Photonics technologies developed at UNSW promise to greatly enhance the ability to cost-effectively monitor power at strategic network locations, in order to address the challenges of new grid architecture.