Abstract 

The growing deployment of distributed energy resources, while providing significant environmental and economic benefits, can, at the same time, result in reduced total system inertia and controllability, hence representing new challenges in power grid operation. Within this context, flexibility (i.e., the ability to adjust to the time-varying grid conditions) plays a crucial role for the transition towards power systems that can efficiently accommodate high shares of renewable energy sources. However, managing flexibility in urban districts and in distribution networks requires control and optimisation tools that are not yet available. Furthermore, a district typically comprises several multi-energy systems (i.e., systems with interconnected electricity/heating/gas networks), which may be regarded as excellent flexibility providers, but which however, currently lack coordination. Novel control strategies and schemes are thus needed to harness their unique potential. However, the limited understanding of how effective frameworks may be devised for coordinating an arbitrarily large number of flexibility sources reflects a knowledge gap that needs to be filled in order to advance the transition to a more sustainable energy grid. This seminar will explore promising distributed control approaches for coordinating flexible resource, which leverage advanced methods, such as model predictive control and time-varying online optimisation, and data; moreover illustrative case studies will also be discussed.

Bio

Alessandra Parisio is Professor of Control of Sustainable Energy Networks at the University of Manchester, Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE). She has been principal or co-investigator on research projects supported by EPSRC, Innovate UK, EC H2020, and various industrial partners in the areas of building climate control, and distributed optimisation and control for flexibility service and grid support provision, with total funding (University of Manchester share) of nearly £7 million. Prof. Parisio is IEEE senior member, co-chair of the IEEE RAS Technical Committee on Smart Buildings and has served/serves as editor of journals within the control and power system areas (e.g. IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems and Applied Energy). She received the IEEE PES Outstanding Engineer Award in January 2021 and the Energy and Buildings Best Paper Award for (for the ten-year period 2008-2017) in January 2019. Her main research interests include: Model Predictive Control; distributed optimisation and control; energy management systems under uncertainty; optimisation and control of multi-energy networks; and distributed flexibility.”