Our experts: Professor Gregor Verbic, Professor Jian Guo (Joe Zhu), Associate Professor Jin Ma, Dr Jeremy Qiu, Dr Cuo (Charlie) Zhang
Our academic partners: ANU, The University of Queensland, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Tsinghua University
Our industry partners: Vellocet Clean Energy, POWOW, My Energy Group, BCU WORLD
The conventional electricity supply paradigm, based on centralised generation and passive demand, is undergoing a transformation, shifting towards a decentralised configuration in response to the increasing ubiquity of customer-owned distributed energy resources (DER).
We use advanced optimisation and data-driven machine learning tools to develop DER optimal scheduling, control, and aggregation to turn them into a flexible system resource that minimises energy expenditure for the customer and delivers energy and network support services to the bulk grid. We study DER aggregation structures, including virtual power plants (VPP) and microgrids, and DER-centric two-way energy markets, such as peer-to-peer energy trading and distribution markets.
We develop novel grid-forming control approaches to allow DER to provide grid-forming services, enabling isolated operation in case of grid outages to increase power supply reliability and the hosting capacity of distribution networks.
We use a state-of-the-art microgrid testbed as a digital twin to test the developed solution in a real-life laboratory environment. The testbed allows for software-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the-loop testing, mimicking the real industry environment, thus enabling testing and evaluation of the performance of the integration of in-field microgrids into network settings and modelling of VPPs for network applications.