Active Distribution Systems with Renewable Resources and Energy Storage Units: Modeling, Analysis and Control Design

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Driven by environmental, economic and technical concerns, the energy sector is moving toward unprecedented major transformations. Large amount of increases in the electrical energy demand will be met by distributed generation units empowered by renewable energy resources in the near future. According to the International Energy Agency report in 2013, despite the difficult economic context, the worldwide renewable energy share is estimated to rise to 25% of gross power generation in 2018 up from 20% in 2011. With the expected high penetration-level of intermittent renewable energy resources (e.g. wind and photovoltaic), power grid stability and reliability becomes a major concern. The energy community has realized that integrating renewable energy resources with energy storage systems-for power smoothing (short-term storage) and energy time shifting (long-term bulk storage)- plays a critical role in improving the grid stability and increasing the penetration-level of renewable energy resources. Integration of such emerging devices will dominantly take place in power distribution systems and in the form of ac, dc or hybrid ac/dc connections to enhance the energy conversion efficiency. With these transformations, conventional distribution systems will be transformed to highly-distributed active distribution systems with several market participants and complicated dynamics, uncertainties and multi-directional power-flow.****With such major transformations facing distribution girds, several fundamental and critical control and operation problems will be yielded. The fundamental problems that should be addressed to meet the short-term needs of industry are: 1) How to optimally control and manage the energy flow of distributed energy storage systems owned by different stakeholders in the presence of renewable generation and market price uncertainties? 2) How to coordinate highly distributed renewable energy resources and energy storage units to support the grid dynamically under the challenging inherent and unsymmetrical characteristics of these resources? 3) What are the impacts of increased penetration-level of dc and hybrid ac/dc sub-grids on the dynamics, stability and control aspects of active distribution systems?****The main objective of this research program is to develop mathematical models, advanced control schemes and energy management algorithms for active distribution systems to overcome the identified integration barriers and help sustainable and clean distributed generation technologies make their contribution to our energy system in a way that enhances the overall grid performance.****The fundamental research, involving theories in power conversion, modeling, control and system optimization is expected to advance knowledge, provide training to highly qualified personnel and provide timely knowledge and solutions to the Canadian industry.**