Events Summary 2015

1. Powerful Stuff! - Promotion of Power Systems for Undergraduate

Engineering Students

A collage of slides from the 5 talks

An information session for electronic and electrical engineering undergraduate students on power system engineering took place in April. Five PhD students from the Electricity Research Centre each gave 10-15 minute introductions on the topics of: ● Active Residential Networks (Alison O'Connell)● Offshore Wind Farms (Jonathan Ruddy)● Demand Side Management (Killian McKenna)● Frequency Control with High Renewables (Pádraig Daly)● Power System Economics and Market Operation (James Ryan)

Killian McKenna discussing some of the motivations behind demand side

management

The purpose of the session with students was to highlight the vast array of topics in power system engineering, be it industry-related or research-related. Themes such as optimisation, control, algorithms, communications, economics, policy and renewable energy integration were discussed. The students were shown videos on climate change, the impact of hurricanes and solar eclipses on power system operation, and the variation of power system loads. There was a question and answer session afterwards, with pizza for all attendees.

2. Entrepreneurship Workshop

Brendan Kelly, of EirGrid Plc, talking about the first steps he took on his journey to becoming an entrepreneur

Conor Hanley, of ResMed, discusses the possible mechanisms to acquire funding for an early-stage venture

Three speakers, all with engineering degrees, all at different stages of their entrepreneurial journey, each gave a twenty minute talk about their own entrepreneurial experience to date, sharing their key learnings with the audience. There was a lengthy Q&A session with the panel of speakers and the audience after the talks. The crowd then went for networking drinks after the event in the Cobblestone pub, near the event venue. Speaker Bios:Brendan Kelly is an electrical engineer with EirGrid Plc. Brendan is currently developing a team based communication and fan funding mobile app, TeamTalk, with 8bytes. Lisa Ruttledge completed her PhD in electrical engineering at University College Dublin earlier this year. Lisa is co-founder of the Sen Academy, a maths education programme that aims to improve student engagement, understanding and confidence in maths. Conor Hanley is president of the Cardiology Strategic Business Unit of ResMed Inc. Conor co-founded BiancaMed, a company that commercialised a non-contact method to monitor sleep and breathing in the home for consumer and medical applications. ResMed Inc acquired BiancaMed in July 2011. Prior to BiancaMed, Conor led business development efforts in Europe for hydrogen and fuel cells for Air Products.

The attentive audience

Entrepreneurial engineers Conor Hanley, Lisa Ruttledge and Brendan Kelly during the discussion with the audience

3. Energy Thesis in Three Competition

Thesis in Three Competitors: Shaban Awili, Paddy Walsh, Sean Collins, Alex Kulesh, Matthew Horrigan, Jonathan Ruddy, Conor Murphy and James Ryan

An All Ireland energy research pitching competition was held at ESB International for research students. Ten candidates from University College Dublin, University College Cork, Queen’s University College Belfast, and ESB International gave a pitch of their PhD research using only three slides in only three minutes. The rapid fire format was designed to challenge the presenters to be as creative as possible explaining their research. The competitors were judged on a matrix of communication criteria, broadly categorised into the headings of context, clarity and charisma. The expert judging panel consisted of Richard Crowley (EirGrid), Carol Murphy (ESB International) and Dr Lisa Ryan (UCD Energy Institute).

The pitches covered a range of topics including smart building data management, intelligent power electronic transformers, market analysis, energy systems integration, power system reserve, and reactive power control of wind farms. Jonathan Ruddy won the audience choice prize. Jonathan’s presentation was on low frequency AC transmission for offshore wind farms. Jonathan used the analogy of how the speed of shaking a bottle of Coca-Cola is related to resulting level of fizz, as way to demonstrate the relationship between frequency and reactive power.

Joseph Devlin won the overall prize. Joseph’s research “Gas Generation Dispatch Optimisation Considering Wind Forecast Error”, was titled “The Two Most Important Gases in Ireland” for the competition, and looks at the impact of wind generation on gas-fired generation in Ireland.

The event garnered publicity in an Irish engineering magazine. The press release and event summaries can be found here:Press Release:http://www.engineersjournal.ie/2015/08/12/energy-research-competition-and-panel-discussion-to-be-held-at-esb-international/Event Summary:http://www.engineersjournal.ie/2015/10/06/queens-student-wins-all-ireland-student-energy-research-competition/

Mathew Horrigan, PhD Student UCD, presenting at the student research elevator pitching competition

4. “Death of the kWh?” Expert Panel Discussion

Chairs of the Panel Discussion • Dr Owen Wilson(CEO, Electricity Association of Ireland)• Dr Muireann Lynch (Senior Researcher, ESRI)

Panel Members• Rodney Doyle(Director of Market Operations, SEMO)• Marguerite Sayers (Managing Director, ESB Networks)• Dr Fergal McNamara(Senior Energy Advisor, DCENR)• Jonathan Jennings(Commercial Manager of Renewables, Glen Dimplex)

Dr Owen Wilson, CEO of the Electricity Association of Ireland, and co-chair of the panel discussion, gave opening statements. He referenced the significant disruption to the energy market in Europe with low wholesale prices due to large penetration of renewables and behind-the-meter solar photovoltaic (PV) panels. Having both fixed costs, such as network and capacity charges, and the variable costs associated with fuel prices, being charged in a single kWh retail price, was highlighted as a challenge. Marguerite Sayers, managing director of ESB Networks, noted that this could result in cross-subsidisation between consumers. She highlighted the case of those who can’t afford self-generating technologies, such as solar panels and micro-combined heat and power units (u-CHP), paying the majority of the fixed costs for those who can, but still require the back-up capacity and networks from the system. Rodney Doyle, Director, Market Operations & General Manager, SEMO, spoke of the role demand side aggregators are currently playing in the market, and the huge potential for this role to increase.

Dr Fergal McNamara, senior energy advisor with the department of communications, energy and natural resources (DCENR), said that they were aware of the dynamically changing energy environment and its potential impacts, and that the department was both taking notes and closely monitoring the situation. Jonathan Jennings, Glen Dimplex, highlighted the huge benefits that technology innovation could bring, such as new developments in heat pumps, solar panels, and storage heaters, and that in the future, these technologies could be operated together to form a virtual distributed power plant.

Dr Muireann Lynch, post-doctoral fellow at the Economic and Social Research Institute, and co-chair of the panel discussion, aptly summarised the discussion: “There were areas of agreement and disagreement amongst the panel members and the audience, which facilitated a great debate. The death of the kWh price may be a natural consequence of the decarbonisation of the electricity system, but could also have far-reaching economic and social consequences. Ireland is and should remain at the forefront of this debate. Given the capital-intensive nature of the electricity industry, and the tendency for investment decisions to determine the future of the system for decades to come, it’s crucial that we continually debate the opportunities and threats associated with each new development.”

5. Towards Smart Low-Carbon Electricity Networks: State-of-the-Art

and Challenges Ahead- Dr Luis Ochoa IEEE PES

Distinguished Lecture

Dr Luis Ochoa wrapping up his IEEE PES Distinguished Lecture at University College Dublin

Dr Luis (Nando) Ochoa, Senior Lecturer in Smart Distribution Networks at The University of Manchester, UK, gave an IEEE PES distinguished lecture on the state-of-the-art industrial and academic Smart Grid research activities. The presentation addressed the bigger picture of future distribution networks and their interactions with the wider power system, focusing on the research challenges in terms of complexity, scalability and proof-of-concept. Aspects of knowledge transfer from universities to industry as well as the training of the next generation of Smart Grid engineers were discussed.

Dr Ochoa’s biography can be found here: https://sites.google.com/site/luisfochoa/

6. Working to Engineer Your Future- Careers Talk by EirGrid

Dr John Ging, Senior Engineer at EirGrid (the transmission system operator in Ireland), gave a presentation to UCD students on the internship and graduate programme opportunities at EirGrid.

The presentation covered what working as an engineer in EirGrid is like and how to apply for a position. It also touched on what skills EirGrid seek and what to include on your CV or Cover Letter.

7. Working Together to Unlock the Role and Value of Flexible Technologies in

Supporting Cost Effective Transition to Lower Carbon Energy Future- Goran Strbac Public Lecture

Goran Strbac, Professor of Energy Systems at Imperial College London, gave a public lecture on the development of holistic modelling approaches of the whole electricity system chain (generation, transmission, distribution) across both operation and planning time horizons. Professor Strbac outlined the importance of an integrated approach to electricity system modelling within the entire whole-energy system context, highlighting the significant interactions between the electricity, heat and transport sectors in achieving the national carbon reduction targets. Professor Strbac stressed that, in order to achieve success, new ideas from both young and more experienced professionals and as such collaboration between these experts at different stages in their careers is more important than ever.

Attending PhD students relaxing before the event Attendees discoursing before Prof. Strbac’s talk

After the lecture, the debate was brought into a more informal atmosphere, where attendees socialised over pizza and refreshments.

Professor Strbac’s biography can be found here: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/g.strbac

8. Research Visit by Queen’s University Belfast

Three PhD students and a post-doctoral researcher from Queen’s University Belfast gave a series of short presentations on research ongoing in the Energy, Power & Intelligent Control research group. The meeting started with a visit to the UCD Real-Time Digital Simulator. A demonstration on the fast frequency response capability of batteries was given by Research Engineer Cathal O’Loughlin and Senior Researcher Kumar Sundaramoorthy. This was followed by presentations on the topics of:

• “The Impact of Electric Vehicles on Power System Transient Stability” by Bowen Zhou,

• “Computational Scheduling Methods for Integrating Electric Vehicles with Power Systems” by Zhile Yang,

• “Smart Energy Monitoring - From Research to Commercialisation” by Dr Jing Deng,

and a discussion on the research topics of mutual interest and potential collaboration.

Events Summary 2015