Reliable and Efficient System for Community Energy Solution- RESCUES

2500万印度农村家庭用不上电，其余农村家庭每天面临4-5小时的断电。在英国，17.2%的农村家庭缺乏燃料，农村地区恢复电力供应的时间是城市的10倍。在印度，主要是基础设施不足，而在英国，主要是网络运营和控制问题。这些偏远地区大多有当地的电力资源，但主要是间歇性的。单独运行这样的系统需要存储空间，从而推高了总体成本。在这种情况下，通过交/直流混合微电网的并网和离网概念是非常具有革命性的。然而，在这种模式下的操作并非没有挑战。技术问题是由于小型同步发电机和逆变器发电导致的惯性低，需求不平衡，网络不对称，模式转换时DG误跳闸，电力电子驱动客户负载导致的谐波失真过大等。这些挑战是对电力工程界的一次重大考验。这是因为，为了解决这些问题，来自不同专业的专家——配电系统运行与控制、电力电子变流器设计与控制、储能必须聚集在一起，融合不同的使能技术，使智能配电网真正发挥作用。该联盟吸纳了这些技术领域的专家，提议进行基础技术研究，将这些技术融合在一起，使社区电网成为现实。本提案的首要目标是发明合适的、具有成本效益的、可扩展的、安全可靠的本地能源系统。这些创新包括尖端的转换器拓扑结构、控制设计、接地电压和频率控制的实际应用、需求管理和DG间歇性输出的热存储创新以及先进的系统操作工具。将设计、测试和验证四个基于实验室的原型系统，以反映影响资源可用性和消费趋势的四种不同的地理和气候情况。从短期到中期来看，该项目将建立并加强英国和印度在电力电子、可再生能源、配电运行和控制以及储能研究方面的领先大学之间的合作。这将促进双方对电力系统实践所面临的挑战的相互理解，以便在未来几年通过日益间歇性的当地能源资源来满足日益增长的能源需求。两国科学家之间的强有力合作将允许对挑战、技术和方法进行严格评估，以解决两国电力分配系统可靠运行的问题。这将导致在不同背景和系统中验证的新颖和科学的理解，这是任何一方孤立工作都不可能实现的。研究成果将在期刊和会议上广泛宣传。虽然很明显，这项研究的吸收主要有利于生活在偏远地区的社区，但其他不可避免的影响是当地人民的就业机会，各种公司的商业机会，如EoN， GE能源，西门子，阿尔斯通电网，ABB在英国和印度，仅举几例。在一个电力工程师普遍面临危机的时代，该项目将为这个跨国合作项目提供训练有素的研究人员，他们具有更广泛的专业知识。英国和印度方面的许多研究人员已经与主要在本国的工业和公用事业合作伙伴建立了健康的合作关系。这个项目将明显地推动研究前沿，并将通过这种真正的跨国研究合作推动技术发展。

25 million rural Indian households do not have access to electricity and the rest of the rural households face 4-5 hours of daily load shedding. In the UK, 17.2% rural households are fuel poor and it takes 10 times longer to restore power supply in rural areas than in the cities. While in India it is the inadequacy of infrastructure, the UK scene is dominated by network operation and control issues. Most of these remote regions have local power resources but mainly intermittent in nature. Running such system in isolation requires storage and thus pushing the overall cost up. On and off grid through hybrid AC/DC micro grid concept is very revolutionary in this context. However, the operation in such mode does not come unchallenged. The technical issues are low inertia because of small synchronous generators and inverter based generation, unbalanced demand, asymmetric network, false tripping of DG during mode transition, excessive harmonic distortion because of power electronics driven customer loads, etc. The challenges represent a major test of the power engineering community. This is because, in order to solve them, experts from different specialities - distribution system operation and control, power electronic converter design and control, energy storage must come together and fuse different enabling technologies for making smart distribution grid truly functional. This consortium, drawing in experts from each of these technical areas, proposes to undertake fundamental technical research to fuse these technologies to make a community grid a reality. The overarching aim of this proposal is to invent appropriate, cost effective, scalable, secure and reliable local energy system. The innovations include cutting edge converter topology, control design, practical application of ground breaking voltage and frequency control, innovation in thermal storage in demand management and the output of DG intermittency and advanced system operation tools. Four prototype laboratory based systems will be designed tested and validated to reflect four different geographical and climate situations influencing the resource availability and consumption trends.In the short to medium term this project will establish and strengthen the collaborations between the leading UK and Indian universities engaged in research in power electronics, renewable energy, power distribution operation and control and energy storage. This will promote mutual understanding of the challenge facing the power system practices in order to meet the growing energy demand through increasingly intermittent local energy resources in the years ahead. Strong collaboration between the scientists in two countries will allow rigorous evaluation of challenges, technology and approach to address the problem of reliably operating power distribution systems of both countries. This will lead to novel and scientific understanding validated on different contexts and systems, which could not be possibly achieved by either side working in isolation. The research outcome will be well publicized in journal and conferences.While it is clear that the uptake of this research primarily benefit the community living in the remote region, the other inevitable impact is employment opportunity for local people, business opportunity for various companies such as EoN, GE Energy, Siemens, ALSTOM GRID, ABB in the UK and in India, to name a few. In a time when there is a universal crisis for power engineers, the project will deliver trained researchers with broader expertise of working in this multinational collaborative project. Many of the investigators on both the UK and Indian side already enjoy healthy collaborative working relationships with industrial and utility partners primarily within their own countries. This programme will clearly move the research frontier and will drive technology development through such true multinational research collaboration.