CHAIR ELECTRIC POWER NETWORKS

AND RENEWABLE ENERGY

The chair “Electric Power Networks and Renewable Energy Sources“ aims at developing technical and economical processes for operators and users of the electric power system, exploiting optimization potentials and finding new and innovative methods of system operation, network planning and grid utilization. In doing so, a systemic point of view is aspired. Thus, besides a general understanding of processes and features of single market participants, the interaction of different players and their influence on the entire system is analyzed in detail at the chair. This results in the following main research topics:

• The analysis and optimization of the influence of grid users on the entire system as well as the development of suitable models for assets and market behavior is of vital importance to master future challenges. By developing these fundamental methods and models, it is possible to gain the necessary improvements in understanding steady-state, quasi-static and dynamic processes in electric power grids. Based on these findings, optimized models for grid planning and operation are derived.
• One of the drivers for these new concepts is the need to deal with more and more renewable energy sources, distributed generation and energy storage devices. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the operating behavior of the device, derive its advantages and disadvantages and finally the resulting potentials and risks for the power system. Based on that, concepts for the technical and economical reasonable integration of these devices in existing and new processes of grid operators especially focusing on energy management. Furthermore, modelling, diagnosis and integration of fuel cells is analyzed as well.
• Due to the limited capacity most of these devices are connected to the low and medium voltage levels which are sparsely equipped with measurement units. Nowadays, the huge amount of distributed generation leads to potential violations of secure grid operation bounds which can neither be detected nor remedied by grid operators because of missing information. Therefore, at the chair research is done on methods of grid state identification which consider both technical fuzziness and economic effort.
• Modelling and optimization of the entire electric power system can only be done if specific properties of assets (overhead lines, cables, gas insulated lines, etc.) and transmission technologies (HVAC, HCDC, etc.) are considered as well. Therefore, the operational behavior of these technologies are analyzed as well focusing especially on their interactions with other assets in the system.

The chair “Electric Power Networks and Renewable Energy Sources“ has longtime experience in the fields of grid computation and simulation, renewable energy sources, e-mobility, energy storage and fuel cells. We offer our knowledge to partners of several research projects, advisory opinions, third party projects and studies.