news and events

  • New CSIRO report

'Intelligent Grid report: a Value Proposition for Distributed Energy in Australia Please click here to access the CSIRO webpage: CSIRO Intelligent Grid Full Report

  • iGrid Perth Forum

The next forum will be held in Perth entitled "Intelligent Grid & Distributed Energy Solutions: A Roadmap for Western Australia". This forum will be held on the 11 March at the Technology Park Function Centre, Bently. This forum continues the process of developing the Australian Distributed Energy Roadmap. The Roadmap will provide an assessment of the potential for Distributed Energy and identify the barriers that inhibit its implementation. It will deliver a concise and practical set of recommendations to accelerate the deployment of Distributed Energy in Australia. You can access past presentations from the section Resources and Publications. Download the forum brochure by clicking here: iGrid Perth brochure

  • D-CODE Model now available

The Description and Cost of Distributed Energy (D-CODE) Model is a working model, designed to be transparent and accessible. We would appreciate your input in making D-CODE as useful and robust as possible. If you have comments, additional data, or feedback about D-CODE, please complete the online feedback form: D-CODE Feedback Form

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Control Methodologies

Full title
Control methodologies of distributed generation for enhanced network stability and control

Description
This project anticipates that more and varied sources of power will be introduced to the grid and investigates their potential impacts. It also seeks to develop technology and software packages to manage the introduction of smaller and less constant sources of electricity into the network.

Rapidly evolving energy technology makes it possible to run smaller generators with high efficiency to feed power into the grid. Wind farms are an example, most of the new wind farms being introduced are between 10 and 15 MW capacity compared to a typical coal-powered plants which are several hundred MW capacity.

Many of these new types of generators do not convert primary energy into electricity in a conventional way, like thermal coal plants do. Also, many of them are of considerably smaller in size than conventional thermal or hydro power plants and their power supply is intermittent. For these reasons the few new distributed electricity generators are mostly connected to low and medium voltage grids and not to the high voltage transmission grid.

While these new technologies only provide a small fraction of the system load they have little impact on the behaviour of a power system. However, if the amount of new generation technology introduced in a power system becomes substantial, it the overall behaviour of the system will change. This project will model the level of penetration of new smaller technology and their location and to analyse the future dynamic behaviour of power system.

Research Team:
University of Queensland

Expected outcomes:
Comprehensive model of the future distributed generation system for power system stability analyses.

A software platform for testing and evaluating new distributed generation technologies regarding system security.

Proper control design to integrate distributed generation with existing large power grid without violating system constraints.

A comprehensive understanding of the security issues of integration of distributed generation in the National Electricity Market (NEM) Grid.

A package of algorithms and software for testing, evaluating and integrating distributed generation in the NEM grid.


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