Decentralization in Energy Systems: Absorbing Solar and Storage into Grids
As prices for solar photovoltaics and battery energy storage plummet, grids around the globe are undergoing tremendous changes. How should we design and operate grids in the future in the presence of these technologies? This talk will cover some of my group’s recent efforts to answer this question. First, I will focus on a new approach to decentralized network optimization – a variant of the primal-dual subgradient method – that can be used to enable grid-integration of distributed energy resources such as solar photovoltaics, batteries and electric vehicles. I will then discuss how grids should be built in the future when distributed energy resource costs are so low. Using a simple concept called an iso-reliability curve, I will explain a method to identify cost-optimal fully decentralized systems – i.e. standalone solar home systems. After applying this method to a large solar resource dataset, I will present results indicating that in many unelectrified parts of the world, future decentralized systems will be able to deliver electricity at costs and reliabilities better than existing centralized grids.
Date: 30 April 2018, 14:00 (Monday, 2nd week, Trinity 2018)
Venue: Information Engineering, Banbury Road OX1 3PH
Venue Details: MR4
Speaker: Professor Duncan Callaway (UC Berkeley)
Organising department: Department of Engineering Science
Organiser: Professor Kostas Margellos (University of Oxford)
Organiser contact email address: kostas.margellos@eng.ox.ac.uk
Host: Professor Kostas Margellos (University of Oxford)
Part of: Control Seminar Series
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Kostas Margellos